Well, I'm not going to make Quetzal's arguments for him, but if the phenomena that are important to him are best studied with the concept of fitness, then of course any theory that precludes fitness isn't going to be particularly useful to him. If the gene-centered view doesn't allow the concept of fitness, then, yeah, I guess I see Questzal's problem with the gene-centric point of view.
If fitness really is important to population biology or population genetics, and if the gene-centered point of view eliminates fitness without any compensatory features, then I would imagine that in these fields the preclusion of "fitness" would be a serious drawback to the concept of gene-centered selection.
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So maybe, to clarify the issue, i'm asking is fitness fundamental to the concept of natural selection.
Well, from where I'm sitting (not an expert in population genetics and only knowing as much as Wikipedia has told me), it appears that
fitness is a measurement of what natural selecton is doing. I may be biased by my training in the physical sciences, but the ability to measure its effects is what makes a concept useful. Natural selection really only becomes a useful concept if we can see it occurring; "fitness" appears to be one way of measuring whether it is occurring (and, in so doing, gives us an operational definition of what we really mean by natural selection).
But maybe I should bow out and let the biologists explain this. Heh. I'm trying to explain a concept of which I'm pretty ignorant about -- sort of like a creationist.
Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. --
Charley the Australopithecine
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