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
Selfish genetic element successful selfish genetic elements. The discovery of transposable elements led to her being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1983. The empirical study of selfish genetic elements benefited greatly from the emergence of the so-called gene-centred view of evolution in the nineteen sixties and seventies. In contrast with Darwin's original formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection that focused on individual organisms, the gene's-eye view takes the gene to be the central unit of selection in evolution. It conceives evolution by natural selection as a process involving two separate entities: replicators (entities that produce faithful