Talk:The Extended Phenotype

article needs expansion and simplicity
I think this article is not very clear to the casual reader. Since there are some pages which redirect to this page, it would be good to begin with a clear and simple definition, along with some concrete examples, of what exactly is meant by "extended phenotype". Cazort 18:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I second this request (Ben, July 8, 2006) 68.161.173.184 19:15, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Thirded, however I am not familiar enough with the concept to do so at this time. &mdash; coe l acan t a lk  &mdash; 05:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

clumsy sentence
Here's a particularly clumsy sentence: "He then goes further to point to first animal morphology and ultimately animal behaviour, which appears advantageous not to the animal itself, but rather to a parasite which afflicts it." What's the parasite? The gene? That's not very accurate language. The gene that makes an organism can hardly be considered to be merely a parasite upon that organism. Or maybe I'm totally missing the intended meaning of this sentence? Either way it's clumsy. &mdash; coe l acan t a lk  &mdash; 05:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I think the parasite is a parasite. For example a crab may be invaded by a parasite which effectively castrates the crab, as a result of which the crab fattens up to the benfit of the invading parasite. So the fattened crab may be viewed as a phenotypic expression of the parastic genes. Maybe the sentence should read, ". . . advantageous not to the genes of the animal itself, but rather to the genes of a parasite which afflicts it." Or perhaps it should be re-written as it is a bit clumsy. By the way, the final chapter of the second edition of The Selfish Gene summarises this stuff, and is a lot easier to read than The Extended Phenotype itself! Laurence Boyce 19:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Does the concept of the extended phenotype warrant a separate article?
I'm reading this book at the moment (the 2nd last Dawkins book to read) and I can probably add a more detailed summary by going back through it and making a quick synopsis. However, only the last few chapters really deal the the extended phenotype as such, so we can't go into much detail here. It might be a possibility to have a separate article on the concept going into significantly more detail, perhaps titled extended phenotype. It can probably be summarized reasonably well here and at phenotype, but I don't see the harm in having a more thorough entry on it.

(By the way, there is so much in the book that could be used here, for example whole articles on things like constraints on evolutionary perfection, segregation distorters and host manipulation by parasites. Richard001 (talk) 08:51, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

ridiculous
who are the forces that want to keep this book from reception and translation ? every kitsch crap gets printed as portugese, german, arabic, russian asf. translation - but not "ext. phenotype". "This is political, and don't tell me it's not!" (quote of John Malkovich from Coen bros. "burn after reading") 80.246.119.122 (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Who deleted my addition?
The EP is not a testable scientific hypothesis. It isn't scientific. This should be noted. Neutrality.

Savagedjeff (talk) 22:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I am adding its unscientific basis again, don't delete without giving a reason.

Savagedjeff (talk) 20:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Reverted. Here's my reason: TEP is not described as a testable scientific hypothesis.  We do not need to list what it is not.  It is not, for instance, a walrus.  More seriously, TEP is intended as a way of viewing biological entities so that one can better understand certain phenomena.  That is all; and this is stated right in the introduction of the book using the analogy of the Necker Cube.  Anyway, if you are so concerned as to TEP's scientific status, perhaps you might like to point us in the direction of sources that savage it as some non-scientific barbarism.  Here's a source (referring to a scientific workshop specifically on TEP) that points to its utility as a "biological concept".  --P LUMBAGO  15:13, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Nice strawman with the walrus. It isn't scientific. It has not been incorporated into the Theory of Evolution/Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The idea holds no weight and does not hold up to the falsifiability standard. The fact that it is non-scientific is elementary. All you have is a single source in 30 years since the "concept" was introduced in a pop book. The source of it not being scientific is Dawkins himself:

"This is a work of unabashed advocacy. I want to argue in favour of a particular way of looking at animals and plants, and a particular way of wondering why they do the things that they do. What I am advocating is not a new theory, not a hypothesis which can be verified or falsified, not a model which can be judged by its predictions. If it were any of those things, I agree with Wilson (1975, p. 28) that the “advocacy method” would be inappropriate and reprehensible. But it is not any of those things. What I am advocating is a point of view, a way of looking at familiar facts and ideas, and a way of asking new questions about them. Any reader who expects a convincing new theory in the conventional sense of the word is bound to be left, therefore, with a disappointed “so what?” feeling. But I am not trying to convince anyone of the truth of any factual proposition. Rather, I am trying to show the reader a way of seeing biological facts.

"I doubt that there is any experiment that could be done to prove my claim."

From the first paragraph of the book.

http://scilib.narod.ru/Biology/Dawkins/Phenotype/Dawkins_R.-Extended_Phenotype.html

Science without the science.

Savagedjeff (talk) 21:34, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is that we do not include cherry-picked phrases in articles. Your "neutral" edit was to add a phrase that suggests the book is non scientific. You would need a reliable secondary source for that, with a proper analysis to explain how a highly cited book can also wear that label. In view of the point made by Plumbago above, and the related discussion at Talk:Richard_Dawkins, you would need more than just a minor reference (see WP:REDFLAG). Given Dawkins' high profile, there would be lots of reliable sources willing to point out blunders or flaws in Dawkins' work, so if this book has problems, there should be lots of high quality sources pointing them out. Johnuniq (talk) 03:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * my two cents : in this article, the EP is presented as a concept.  This is good enough. --Grondilu (talk) 07:35, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Bad Definition
The definition given here really doesn't do justice to the idea of TEP. The most distinctive aspect of TEP is that a phenotypic effect is not limited to effects that genes have on the organism itself, but to all heritable effects that an organism has on it's environment. The best example of this is the one Dawkins uses repeatedly, the example of the beaver dam. In this example, a phenotypic effect is not limited to the beaver, but is extended to include the physical environment that the beaver affects, ie, the dam, the shape of the lake caused by the dam, the shape of the logs used in the dam, etc. The important point here is that natural selection operates on genes through their phenotypic effects, which are not limited to the physical body of an animal, or even it's cognition or behavior. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.91.232.158 (talk) 21:10, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Is this article about the book or the concept?
It needs to be decided whether this article is about the concept, "extended phenotype", or the book, The Extended Phenotype. The article's current introduction and much of its content suggests that it is about the concept, but the title of the article, with its capital letters and italics, suggests that it is about the book. I recommend that either two separate articles be written or that the article be moved to the new name, "extended phenotype". If you want to contact me for some reason, please use my user talk page, not this article's talk page. -- Kjkolb (talk) 04:52, 9 October 2014 (UTC)