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E. O. Wilson
and his book
Sociobiolo-
gy: A New
Synthesis

than conjecture.
None of the claims made by him and his supporters have
ever been backed up by scientific findings. On the contrary, all
scientific data have shown that his ideas are utterly mistaken.
Another of Wilson's unscientific claims is that living things
are nothing more than gene carriers, and that their most impor-

tant responsibility is to transmit those genes to subsequent gen-
erations. In his view, evolution is actually the evolution of genes.
In his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, he expresses this un-
scientific claim thus:
In a Darwinist sense, the organism does not live for itself. Its pri-
mary function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it repro-
duces genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier. Each
organism generated by sexual reproduction is a unique, acciden-
tal subset of all the genes constituting the species. Natural selec-
tion is the process whereby certain genes gain representation in
the following generations superior to that of other genes located

at the same chromosome positions. ... But the individual organ-
ism is only their vehicle, part of an elaborate device to preserve
and spread them with the least possible biochemical perturba-
tion. Samuel Butler's famous aphorism, that the chicken is only
egg's way of making another egg, has been modernized: the or-

The Social Weapon: Darwinism