Dawkins's Biggest Mistake: Giving Genes a Mind

Richard Dawkins is one of the clearest scientific communicators alive. The Selfish Gene (1976) is a genuine landmark — it took the gene-centric view of evolution and made it unforgettable. That is the achievement. Unforgettable prose has a way of becoming the thing people mistake for the underlying fact. Then he handed the gene a personality. The Metaphor That Got Away Read the opening chapters of…