The fundamental pathologies of gene-centered thinking in biology
arise from the materialist bent of virtually all reputable
biologists. This mindset prevents them from acknowledging the
organizing ideas that constitute whole cells and whole organisms
as what they are. It also forces them to attempt to understand
the organism from the bottom up, starting with genes. But when they
do this, they inevitably end up attributing to genes the organizing
ideas that actually belong to the whole cell and whole organism.