Hmmm. I feel like I probably don’t have a great deal to contribute in the way of thinky things on the stuff we talked about this week, because as a Biology major, most of what was presented wasn’t new material for me. I found the Dawkins chapter interesting, though – I haven’t read The Selfish Gene (though I’ve heard good things and keep meaning to read it), but the process he goes through in generalizing evolution reminds me a great deal of mathmatics – you can work through a few examples of a given problem type (say, a linear regression), and in doing so generate a simplified formula that applies to all cases of the problem. Dawkins’ replicators are almost equivalent to the variable in a given formula – for evolution, the process holds true no matter what the variable is.
I also apologize for my somewhat flailing attempts at explaining population genetics/drift – I’m not much of a lecturer, although if anyone wants clarification some of that, I can do my best.