Back in 2016, The Guardian ran a glowing piece for the 40th anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins’s influential book The Selfish Gene, which argued that organisms (like humans) are merely the vehicles that genes use to survive and propagate themselves. The author of the piece, evolutionary biologist Adam Rutherford, wrote that the book’s fame would last forever, for “as long as we study life, it will be read.” Yet even in 2016, Dawkins’s selfish gene model had begun to come under attack from other scientists. Since then, the cracks in the theory have grown. Leading the charge against...
