Against the Puppets of the Selfish Gene: A Whiteheadian Dance of Creative Evolution as a Response to Dawkins.

This discussion note contrasts Richard Dawkins' genecentric neo-Darwinian theory of evolution with Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy to propose a philosophical critique of mechanistic evolutionary models. Dawkins' The Selfish Gene frames evolution as a struggle of selfish genes, with organisms as mere vehicles. Whitehead's process philosophy, however, reimagines evolution as a creative, relational process driven by creativity and subjective aim, where chaos fosters novelty. Drawing on the chaostability hypothesis, which posits that higher chaos enhances system stability, I argue that Whitehead's framework offers a holistic alternative to Dawkins' reductionism, emphasizing evolution as a dance of becoming. This note invites further exploration of evolution's metaphysical dimensions in the philosophy of biology.