Gene-centered view of evolution Richard Dawkins and George C. Williams, other biologists and philosophers have expanded and refined the selfish-gene theory, such as John Maynard Smith, George R. Price, Robert Trivers, David Haig, Helena Cronin, David Hull, Philip Kitcher, and Daniel C. Dennett. The gene-centric view has been opposed by Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, David Sloan Wilson, and philosopher Elliott Sober. An alternative, multilevel selection (MLS), has been advocated by E. O. Wilson, David Sloan Wilson, Sober, Richard E. Michod, and Samir Okasha. Writing in the "New York Review of Books", Gould has characterized the gene-centered perspective as confusing book-keeping with causality. Gould
Adaptation and Natural Selection Adaptation and Natural Selection Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams. Williams, in what is now considered a classic by evolutionary biologists, outlines a gene-centered view of evolution, disputes notions of evolutionary progress, and criticizes contemporary models of group selection, including the theories of Alfred Emerson, A. H. Sturtevant, and to a smaller extent, the work of V. C. Wynne-Edwards. The book takes its title from a lecture by George Gaylord Simpson in January 1947 at the Princeton University. Aspects of Williams' book were