## Definition The **gene-centred view of evolution** (also called *gene's-eye view*) holds that the fundamental unit on which natural selection acts is the individual gene — not the organism, the group, or the species. A gene that causes organisms to behave in ways that increase the gene's own probability of being copied will increase in frequency across generations, regardless of whether such behaviour benefits the organism as a whole. The phrase was crystallised by Richard Dawkins in *The Selfish Gene* (1976), building on population-genetics work by W.D. Hamilton and George Williams. ## Why the Gene, Not the Individual Classical Darwinism focused on the survival and reproduction of individual organisms. The gene-centred view shifts the frame: organisms live for decades at most, while a successful gene can persist — essentially unchanged — across millions of generations. Natural selection therefore "sees through" the ephemeral vehicle and acts on the heritable information inside it. Any gene that reliably produces more copies of itself, by whatever means — cooperation, aggression, altruism toward carriers of the same gene — will come to dominate the gene pool. Formally, the frequency $p$ of allele $A$ in generation $t+1$ is determined by: $ p_{t+1} = \frac{p_t \cdot \bar{w}_A}{\bar{w}} $ where $\bar{w}_A$ is the mean fitness of individuals carrying $A$ and $\bar{w}$ is mean population fitness. Over time, genes with higher-than-average fitness increase; genes with lower fitness are eliminated. ## Mechanism: Competition and Cooperation - **Allele competition.** At any chromosomal locus, alternative alleles compete for representation in future generations. A small but consistent fitness advantage of one allele over its competitors is enough to sweep it to fixation over thousands of generations. - **Between-gene cooperation.** Genes at different loci share the same survival machine and the same reproductive fate. Genes that build complementary proteins or behavioural programmes cooperate because their fates are linked within the same lineage. - **Cooperation breaks down** when genes can decouple their transmission from that of their cohabitants — as in meiotic drive, selfish genetic elements, and some organelle conflicts. ## Refutation of Group Selection The gene-centred view provides the strongest argument against naive group-selection theories, which assume that animals behave for "the good of the species." If a mutant gene caused an individual to sacrifice itself for unrelated group members, that gene would be diluted in the very generation it acted. Only if helpers share enough genes with recipients (see [[Kin Selection and Inclusive Fitness]]) does apparent altruism survive gene-level scrutiny. ## Implications for Behaviour Once behaviour is understood as a gene's strategy for replication, phenomena previously labelled puzzling — parental sacrifice, sibling rivalry, deceptive plumage, parasite manipulation of host behaviour — find a unified explanatory frame. The organism is, in Dawkins's vivid phrase, a "survival machine" steered by its genetic passengers. ## Related - [[Replicator and Vehicle]] - [[The Selfish Gene]] - [[Kin Selection and Inclusive Fitness]] - [[Evolutionarily Stable Strategy]] - [[Extended Phenotype]] ## Sources - [[The Extended Selfish Gene (Dawkins 2016)]]