Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution anthropology, and those who consider a creator to be unnecessary, such as Richard Dawkins who published "The Selfish Gene" just three years later. Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" is a 1973 essay by the evolutionary biologist and Eastern Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky, criticising anti-evolution creationism and espousing theistic evolution. The essay was first published in "American Biology Teacher" in 1973. Dobzhansky first used the title statement, in a slight variation, in a 1964 presidential address to the American Society of Zoologists, "Biology, Molecular
The Selfish Gene and Natural Selection" (1966), which argued that altruism is not based upon group benefit "per se", but is a result of selection that occurs "at the level of the gene mediated by the phenotype" and any selection at the group level occurred only under rare circumstances. This approach was developed further during the 1960s by W. D. Hamilton and others who opposed group selection and selection aimed directly at benefit to the individual organism: Despite the principle of 'survival of the fittest' the ultimate criterion which determines whether [a gene] "G" will spread is not whether the behavior is to