Gene for skill in tying shoelaces
I read another Richard Dawkins article (see previous post): titled How do you wear your genes? where he writes:
[Genes] are nothing like a blueprint. There is one-to-one mapping between a house and its blueprint. If I point to a spot in a house, you can go straight to that unique spot on the blueprint. You can’t do that with a body. If I prick a particular point, say on the back of your hand, there is no single spot in your set of genes corresponding to that point. If the genes are not a blueprint, what are they? A favourite simile is a recipe, where the body is a cake. There is no one-to-one mapping between words of the recipe, and crumbs of the final cake.
He tries to explain why you can’t speak of genes as if each of them are ”’for’ some very specific thing. A gene for religion, a gene for sodomy or a gene for skill in tying shoelaces.” Searching Google News for “gene”, I found a news article published last Friday, reporting that “[scientists] have pinpointed a gene which controls production of ear wax.”, which according to Dawkins probably is “a much less momentous discovery than it sounds”.