Quirky Genes

In an excellent piece submitted to the Australian, philosopher Paul Griffiths explains one of the reasons why we are finding genes for just about everything, from stupidity to obesity, from aggression to depression, from religion to intelligence. The reason is that when molecular biologists talk about 'genes' they can mean quite a number of different things -- even (and this was an eye opener to me) when they are referring to bits of DNA.

This underscores my claims made a couple of postings ago that we should be very careful and precise when we use these concepts in talk of evolution. Just because something is inherited or replicated does not make it into a gene; similarly, just because something inherited or replicated can be located on the DNA does not make it into a gene either!

I have tried to upload the text of Griffiths' article on blogger, but so far no success, so you'll have to get it here.