We need new metaphors that put life at the centre of biology | Aeon Essays
The neo-Darwinian perspective, which still dominates the popular understanding of biology, isolates individual organisms or genes from the context of the living matrix that sustains them. Scarcity, competition and individual success are seen as the main drivers of evolution. This is an outdated perspective, based on outdated metaphors like Richard
... See moreDaniel Wahl • Designing Regenerative Cultures
A popular narrative now casts all living entities as ‘machines’ built by genes, as Richard Dawkins called them. For Mayr, biology was unique among the sciences precisely because its objects of study possessed a program that encoded apparent purpose, design and agency into what they do. On this view, agency doesn’t actually manifest in the moment of... See more
Philip Ball • Life With Purpose
So genes are like gravity—but animals aren’t like atoms.
Tim Urban • Page Not Found — Wait But Why
The metaphor of DNA as a blueprint or instruction manual is not correct given the prevalence of transposons; rather it is “part library and part zoo, with the unruly creatures of the menagerie constantly tearing into the pages, creating mutation and mayhem” (p. 177).
Book review – Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life,
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