On another point, Jim points to the gene-centered view of evolution that has been championed by Dawkins '
it might be a side note in science history, but the phrase that Dawkins used to illustrate his thesis was 'the chicken is the egg's idea to get more eggs' (wording from memory), which he calls an old joke, was in fact first made by the great and paradoxical writer Samuel Butler. Today Butler is know, if at all, for the autobographical The Way of All Flesh and the strange fantasy Erewhon. But in his day, he was a serious rival to Darwin, with his own theory of evolution, who, if anything, was better thought of than the man we all acknowledge today as the founder of evolutionary science.