IMHO you are wrong: Natural selection (as per standard theory and the MS) occurs at the level of the individual. Arguments for higher levels of selection, "group selection", have been around at least since Wynne-Edwards (late 50s?), and Gould/PE have little to do with that. ravi
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You and Doyle are tight wads and didn't go out and buy Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. It was only 39.95 and you got 1400 pages.
Gould spends a long chapter, Chapter 8 on overhauling the concept that natural selection occurs at the level of the individual. Instead Gould substitutes a hierarchy:
The gene-individual
The cell-individual
the organism-individual
the deme-individual
the species-individual
the clad-individual
This conceptual overhaul makes a lot of sense when you realize that changes in geology and climate produce cross phylogenic changes far above individuals and species. As the ecological niches are re- configured so the plants together with the animals (clads) who inhabit these inter-related ecological niches change.
``Why do you need epigenetics to explain genotype changes? Drift, random mutation, etc -- the old bag of tricks...''
Because once you get down to detail and really tough questions, the list of modern synthesis theory's old bag of tricks all depend on a single property, their explicit rejection of any feed-back loop. The result is that somehow a blind process has always managed to stumble upon an adaptive fit, without any form of feed back.
Even a naive and crude probably assessment says no. There are historical and philosophical reasons for demanding a seemingly random process, but those historical and philosophical reasons are gone. I haven't followed recent US academic arguments because I think they are just spinning their wheels over the same basic arguments over and over.
Let's go back further to look at the history and philosophy. First of course was the escape from any form of theory that lead to theological explanations like intelligent design. Julius Huxley was big on getting rid of that nonsense and bringing down the idea that British and American modern society was the pinnacle of the evolution of man or the pinnacle of our cultural evolution. And for Huxley at least, he had a grudge match with Lysenko.
There is a great amount of ideology that I approve of in the Modern Synthesis since a lot of smart lefties went at forging it. But overall the basic concepts are not sufficient.
Anyway, read the long article I posted. After some thought you will see that it also presents the possibility that culture can provide an environmental constellation of factors that all come to bare on an epigenome system.
CG