But if we set selection pressures on one side, we can say something about the half-life of a replicator on the basis of its length alone. If the stretch of chromosome we choose to define as our replicator of interest is long, it will tend to have a shorter half-life than a shorter replicator, simply because it is more likely to be broken by crossing-over. A very long portion of chromosome ceases to deserve the title of replicator at all.
Evolutionary psychologists have noted the particular eagerness with which new babies are scanned for resemblances to their paternal, as opposed to maternal relatives – for the obvious reason that it is harder to be confident of paternity than maternity.
Physics appears to be a complicated subject, because the ideas of physics are difficult for us to understand. Our brains were designed to understand hunting and gathering, mating and child-rearing: a world of medium-sized objects moving in three dimensions at moderate speeds.
Scientists who use such language, whether at the level of the individual or the gene, know very well that it is only a figure of speech. Genes are just DNA molecules. You’d have to be barking mad to think that ‘selfish’ genes really have deliberate intentions to survive!
Polls suggest that approximately 95 per cent of the population of the United States believe they will survive their own death.
The behaviour of physical, nonbiological objects is so simple that it is feasible to use existing mathematical language to describe it, which is why physics books are full of mathematics.
Just by chance, you could happen to give all your mother’s versions to your child, and none of your father’s. In this case, your father would have given no DNA to his grandchild. Of course such a scenario is highly unlikely, but as we go down to more distant descendants, total non-contribution of DNA becomes more possible.
Evolution is within us, around us, between us, and its workings are embedded in the rocks of eons past.
I am not in favor of offending or hurting anyone just for the sake of it. But I am intrigued and mystified by the disproportionate privileging of religions in our otherwise secular societies. All politicians must get used to disrespectful cartoons of their faces, and nobody riots in their defense. What is so special about religion that we grant it such uniquely privileged respect?
It is widely admitted that serious error follows from the uncritical assumption that adaptations are for the good of the species.
Human thoughts and emotions emerge from exceedingly complex interconnections of physical entities within the brain.
A more systematic study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi ‘found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from’.51.
Many people believe in God because they believe they have seen a vision of him – or of an angel or a virgin in blue – with their own eyes. Or he speaks to them inside their heads. This argument from personal experience is the one that is most convincing to those who claim to have had one. But it is the least convincing to anyone else, and anyone knowledgeable about psychology.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from pacifism, we have a pusillanimous reluctance to use religious names for warring factions. In Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are euphemized to ‘Nationalists’ and ‘Loyalists’ respectively.
Mark Twain’s dismissal of the fear of death is another: ‘I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
The denouement is perhaps the most moving scene of her show Letting Go of God.
Ethnic’ in this context is yet another euphemism. What we are seeing in Iraq is religious cleansing. The original usage of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia is also arguably a euphemism for religious cleansing, involving Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians.6 I.
Germ-line replicators, then, are units that actually survive or fail to survive, the difference constituting natural selection.
Well, my family has been Catholic for generations, so doesn’t that make me Catholic?’ ‘That’s lazy, sloppy abuse of language. My family has been farming for generations but that doesn’t define me as a farmer.
Active replicators have some effect on the world, which influences their chances of surviving.