The Human Gene

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The geansie view uses the word jean in this much more old fashioned way of simply defining a something that's stably inherited. This means that it can be almost of arbitrarily long, a gean, a camel, as anything has, can be inherited together. And how do we know? How much do we know about the genetic composition of, letsay, the human geno? Does everyone agree that it's divided into so and so many genes? The human diene, te, first approximation.

One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin’s theory of natural selection was to help explain apparently “purposeful” or “designed” aspects of biology in a purely mechanistic theory of unguided evolution. Features are good if they help organisms survive. But should we put organisms at the center of our attention, or the genetic information that governs those features? Arvid Ågren helps us understand the attraction of the “selfish gene” view of evolution, as well as its shortcomings. This biological excursion has deep connections to philosophical issues of levels and emergence.

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Arvid Ågren received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Toronto. He is currently a Wenner-Gren Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. Previously he worked at Cornell and Harvard. His recent book is The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution.

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