A Humanist’s Response to Denis Noble’s “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis”

Abstract

Denis Noble suggests that biologists who created the Modern Synthesis were taken in by conceptual traps and illusions hidden in the language they used. Rather than blame language itself, my response counters that all writers are responsible for careful attention to the implications of the metaphors they use, and that Richard Dawkins deliberately chose “the selfish gene.” Noble’s concept of biological relativity restores Darwin’s fuller and more nuanced definition of natural selection and shows how it also accounts for Lamarck’s assertion that acquired characteristics can be inherited. Biological relativity is supported by Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s chiasmic ontology.