June 29, 2001

The Ugly Underside of Altruism

By DAVID P. BARASH

"How do I love thee? Let me count thy genes."

There has been a revolution in evolution -- or, rather, in biologists' understanding of how natural selection works. The revolution derives from a new sense of what is important, what is the biological "bottom line," what is -- as evolutionists put it -- the appropriate "unit of selection."

It has become clear that the crucial unit is the gene: not the species, nor the group, nor even the individual, but the smallest meaningful

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