History of evolutionary thought theory were particularly controversial, spawning the neutralist-selectionist debate over the relative importance of mutation, drift and selection, which continued into the 1980s without a clear resolution. In the mid-1960s, George C. Williams strongly critiqued explanations of adaptations worded in terms of "survival of the species" (group selection arguments). Such explanations were largely replaced by a gene-centered view of evolution, epitomized by the kin selection arguments of W. D. Hamilton, George R. Price and John Maynard Smith. This viewpoint would be summarized and popularized in the influential 1976 book "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. Models of the period seemed to
Gene-centered view of evolution views selection as working on many levels, and has called attention to a hierarchical perspective of selection. Gould also called the claims of "Selfish Gene" "strict adaptationism", "ultra-Darwinism", and "Darwinian fundamentalism", describing them as excessively "reductionist". He saw the theory as leading to a simplistic "algorithmic" theory of evolution, or even to the re-introduction of a teleological principle. Mayr went so far as to say "Dawkins' basic theory of the gene being the object of evolution is totally non-Darwinian." Gould also addressed the issue of selfish genes in his essay "Caring groups and selfish genes". Gould acknowledged that Dawkins was