Stephen Jay Gould and Sydney Brenner Agree on Junk DNA

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould. I'm also a big fan of Sydney Brenner. Here's Gould writing in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (pages 1269-1270). This is long and complicated but if you want to understand junk DNA and why it conflicts with Darwinism, then you've got to make the effort. I especially like the idea that Gould understands the difference between junk DNA, which can't be explained by any adaptive mechanism, and "selfish DNA," which isn't junk and has a Darwinian explanation. Many people don't get this.

Gould and Brenner are talking about repetitive DNA. This includes highly repetitive sequences of simple repeats and moderately repetitive sequences that include the transposons.
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