First, most genes, as Richard Dawkins describes them, are not “blueprints” but “recipes.” They do not specify parts, but processes; they are formulas for forms. If you change a blueprint, the final product is changed in a perfectly predictable manner: eliminate a widget specified in the plan, and you get a machine with a missing widget. But the alteration of a recipe or formula does not change the product in a predictable manner: if you quadruple the amount of butter in a cake, the eventual effect is more complicated than just a quadruply buttered cake (try it; the whole thing collapses in an
...more
