Frozen Evolution. Or, that’s not the way it is, Mr. Darwin. A Farewell to Selfish Gene.

This is one of the basic concepts of modern biology designating the predisposition for certain traits. However, even professionals in various fields cannot agree on a specific meaning for the word gene. Molecular geneticists have a clear concept in this respect as they define a gene as a continuous segment of a DNA molecule. Evolutionary biologists know this is ridiculous and that a gene cannot be defined in this way, but they are in a negligible minority at the present time and, if they were to fight for their version of the truth, they would definitely suffer defeat. Consequently, they prefer to grit their teeth in silence and act as if everything were fine (and usually alternately use the concept of a gene in the original and in the molecular biological meaning). In this entire book, the concept of gene could be replaced by the word predisposition. The reason why I don’t satisfy non-biologist readers and why I don’t replace it by the word predisposition lies primarily in the fact that I will also have to use other technical terms that are derived from the word gene. These include genotype, genome and gene pool. Predispositiontype, predispositionome, predisposition pool – no I guess that wouldn’t work.