The issue I take with staying with genes as a course driver – and the subsequent sociobiological assumptions coming from such a bottom-up scenario – is it ignores the smoothing factors that occur as you go up the hierarchy of scale.
That is to say, perhaps a gene is a “selfish-gene” (although I believe I had arguments against Dawkins on that but I’ll pause that). But how many levels up does that ‘trait’ migrate up?
Horizontally, genes may be selfish things. But Is the selfishness vertical?
Once proteins are formed, does the selfishness carry up as each feature moves from undifferentiated stem-cell into differentiated purposes? Or does it form a cooperative support system whereby its overarching roles determines its survival from WITHIN the organism?
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ok, because “convergent evolution” when applied to what I consider “family traits” (like ‘nuclear families’ and communities that spring often out from them as it were and the resulting cousins and such) and referred to as ethnicities made me think of that – found it – Polygenism I think it is.
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