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
The Selfish Gene unit of heredity." However, he continues in a later chapter: Dawkins' later formulation is in his book "The Extended Phenotype" (1982), where the process of selection is taken to involve every possible phenotypical effect of a gene. Stephen Jay Gould finds Dawkins' position tries to have it both ways: The view of "The Selfish Gene" is that selection based upon groups and populations is rare compared to selection on individuals. Although supported by Dawkins and by many others, this claim continues to be disputed. While naïve versions of group selectionism have been disproved, more sophisticated formulations make accurate predictions in