Beyond the Selfish Gene: A Relational Reframing of Evolution — 2 The Gene as Fictional Character or: Why biology keeps writing stories it claims to reject

There is a point at which a concept stops functioning as explanation and begins functioning as narrative.

The gene crossed that point a long time ago.

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0. From Replicator to Protagonist

In The Selfish Gene, the gene is introduced as a replicator:

• a unit of persistence
• a locus of differential continuation

Nothing more.

But almost immediately, it acquires:

• motives (“wants to replicate”)
• strategies (“uses the organism”)
• conflicts (“competes with other genes”)

At that moment, the gene ceases to be a theoretical construct and becomes:

a character

Not metaphorically.

Structurally.

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1. The Grammar of Agency

This transformation is not accidental. It is grammatical.

Natural language—especially in its ideational mode—strongly prefers:

Actor → Process → Goal

So instead of:

“some sequences persist at different rates”

we get:

“genes compete to replicate themselves”

The difference is not stylistic.

It is ontological.

Because once something occupies the Actor role, it becomes:

• a source of action
• a bearer of implicit agency

And once that happens, everything downstream reorganises:

• persistence becomes intention
• statistical bias becomes strategy
• constraint becomes opposition

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2. Character Requires Conflict

A character without conflict is inert.

So once genes are cast as actors, the system demands:

antagonists

And they are readily supplied:

• other genes
• the organism
• the environment

Now we have:

• alliances (cooperative genes)
• betrayals (selfish elements)
• regulation (organismal control)

This is no longer biology as description.

This is:

biology as plot

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3. The Illicit Import of Value

Narrative does not operate without value.

So the moment we have:

• cooperation
• selfishness
• conflict
• stability

we also have, implicitly:

• good
• bad
• threat
• resolution

But here’s the critical point:

none of these belong to the process being described

They belong to the mode of construal.

This is not meaning in the semiotic sense—it is not a structured system of signification.

It is:

value projection onto non-valuational dynamics

And it happens automatically.

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4. Why the Fiction Persists

Because the alternative is almost unthinkable.

Try to hold this, without slipping:

There are no agents.

There are no goals.

There is no conflict.

There is only:

differential persistence across configurations.

This is conceptually austere to the point of cognitive hostility.

It offers:

• no entry point for intuition
• no structure for narrative
• no place for the observer

So the system compensates.

It reintroduces:

characters.

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5. The Gene as Necessary Illusion

At this point, we need to be precise.

The fictionalisation of the gene is not simply an error.

It is:

a functional distortion

It allows:

• complex dynamics to be tracked
• patterns to be stabilised in discourse
• explanations to circulate

In other words:

the fiction works

But—and this is the hinge—

what works explanatorily is not necessarily what is ontologically warranted

The gene as character is:

• useful
• productive
• deeply misleading

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6. The Quiet Consequence

Once genes become characters, a deeper shift occurs.

We begin to see the world as:

composed of entities with interests

This does not stay in biology.

It generalises:

• markets “want” efficiency
• nations “seek” security
• systems “adapt” to survive

The same narrative structure propagates across domains.

What began as a metaphor becomes:

a general ontology of agency

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7. What Gets Lost

In all of this, something precise disappears.

Not truth in some grand sense—but resolution.

The ability to say:

this persists more than that

without asking:

why does it want to?

That question—so natural, so compelling—is exactly the one that reintroduces fiction.

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8. The Real Problem

So the issue is not that biologists use metaphors.

The issue is that:

the metaphor becomes indistinguishable from the explanation

And once that happens, critique becomes difficult, because:

• the language feels natural
• the story feels necessary
• the characters feel real

But they are not.

They are:

the residue of a narrative structure imposed on a non-narrative process

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9. And We Do It Again

So when we hear:

• “selfish genetic elements”
• “genes that cheat”
• “organisms that suppress them”

we are not just hearing shorthand.

We are witnessing:

the reconstruction of a fictional world inside a scientific one

A world with:

• actors
• motives
• conflicts
• resolutions

A world that feels intelligible.

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10. The Uncomfortable Alternative

Strip it all away, and what remains is almost nothing:

patterns that continue

patterns that don’t

No heroes.

No villains.

No struggle.

Just:

uneven persistence.

And that, it seems, is a story we refuse to tell.