When Richard Dawkins foregrounded the gene as the central unit of selection, he did more than propose a convenient analytical abstraction. He reordered the explanatory field of evolutionary theory.
Genes became the locus of persistence, the bearers of “fitness,” the axes along which adaptation was to be understood. And with this formal move came an implicit determinism: given variation, given differential replication, outcomes could be traced — at least in principle — along predictable pathways.
The Gene as Cut
From a relational perspective, Dawkins’ gene is a cut through the field of evolution:
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It foregrounds certain relations (inheritance, replication, differential success).
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It suppresses others (developmental contingency, ecological interaction, multi-level causality).
This cut is formal, elegant, and productive. But it is not neutral. It shapes what can be seen as explanation, privileging mechanistic causality at one scale over relational multiplicity across scales.
The Roots of Controversy
The opposition of Stephen Jay Gould, Rose, Lewontin, and others cannot be reduced to mere empirical disagreement. Their unease is epistemic and ontological:
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Dawkins’ formalism appears deterministic, even if probabilistic. Outcomes are framed as necessary given the success of particular genes.
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Gould emphasises variation, contingency, and developmental plasticity, preserving relational multiplicity and resisting inevitability.
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Rose and Lewontin highlight environmental, organismic, and population-level interactions, showing that causation is distributed, contextual, and perspectival.
In short, the conflict is a clash of construals: one seeks explanation through unitary, directional cuts; the other defends the relational field itself.
Intolerance in Action
What emerges is a vivid illustration of intolerance at the level of perspective and unit:
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Intolerance of unit: Gene-centrism marginalises organism, population, and ecological levels, provoking defensive resistance.
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Intolerance of determinism: Gene-level inevitability threatens relational multiplicity and the open-endedness of variation.
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Intolerance of reduction: Compressing evolutionary causation into a single formalism provokes pushback from those attuned to multi-level complexity.
The heat of debate is not simply personal or rhetorical. It is a visible manifestation of the pressures inherent in evolutionary explanation — the intolerances that the previous series traced abstractly now take concrete form.
Relational Perspective
Viewed relationally, the Dawkins-Gould debates are not zero-sum disputes about correctness. They are contests of construal:
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Dawkins’ construal prioritises clarity, formal tractability, and selective focus.
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Gould’s construal prioritises relational multiplicity, historical contingency, and emergent unpredictability.
Neither is “wrong.” Each enacts a cut through the field of constrained possibility, highlighting some aspects while suppressing others. The intensity of disagreement reveals how intolerances operate when construals collide in practice.
What This Illuminates
This episode shows:
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Intolerance can appear as scientific rigour.
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Deterministic formalism may provoke resistance even in empirical science.
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The stakes in methodological choices are ontological as well as explanatory.
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Relational cuts always produce shadows — aspects of the field that are displaced, overlooked, or resisted.
The Dawkins-Gould-Rose-Lewontin confrontation thus becomes a laboratory of intolerance, a case study in how perspective, unit, and determinism generate both insight and opposition.
Looking Ahead
Subsequent posts in this mini-series can trace:
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The finer contours of Gould’s anti-determinism and its insistence on relational variation.
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Rose and Lewontin’s critique as a defence of multi-level and distributed explanation.
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The ways these conflicts illuminate broader structural intolerances in evolutionary thought.
This mini-series will not adjudicate who was “right.” It will show the pressures, constraints, and relational dynamics that make evolutionary theory intellectually and emotionally charged.
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