The Evolution of Cooperation insects, where the workers – which are sterile, and therefore incapable of passing on their genes – benefit the queen, who is essentially passing on copies of "their" genes. This is further elaborated in the "selfish gene" theory of Richard Dawkins, that the unit of evolution is not the individual organism, but the gene. (As stated by Wilson: "the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA.") However, kinship selection works only where the individuals involved are closely related; it fails to explain the presence of altruism and cooperation between unrelated individuals, particularly across species. In a 1971 paper
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation amateurish deficiencies. The ideas in the book were favoured by Radicals, but its presentation remained popular with a much wider public. Prince Albert read it aloud to Queen Victoria in 1845. "Vestiges" caused a shift in popular opinion which – Charles Darwin believed – prepared the public mind for the scientific theories of evolution by natural selection which followed from the publication of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. For decades there was speculation about its authorship. The 12th edition, published in 1884, revealed officially that the author was Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist, who had written the book