Selection acts on genes, not individuals or species — the organism is the vehicle the gene builds to copy itself.
A lens rather than a fact: the biology does not change, but from this position the puzzles that made no sense at the organism level dissolve.
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prerequisite-of →Ideas are replicators under the same selection pressure — an idea spreads because it is good at spreading, not because it is true.The abstraction has to come first. Once selection is understood as acting on replicators rather than bodies, nothing restricts it to molecules — which is what makes the last chapter possible.
← has exampleApparent altruism is usually gene-level accounting — kin selection and reciprocity, not group benevolence.
The clearest demonstration of the lens paying off: behaviour that is inexplicable as individual self-interest is straightforward once the gene is the accounting unit.