… the obsession with ‘selfish genes’, that is, the neoliberal theory of action parading as biology, makes it impossible to follow Lovelock’s reductionist call. When you really believe that externalities — to locate this philosophy of biology where it belongs: namely economics — cannot be internalized by selfish individual agents, how could you possibly understand what it is to be a lichen, a worm, a bacteria, a gas, a climate, a coral reef or a cow’s rumen? Impenetrable agents, able to calculate their interest and externalize the rest, are not biological creatures, but an invention of a long line that includes Locke, Smith, Spencer, transmogrified through three centuries of intermingling with political philosophy into the only inhabitants of planet earth. When you take Richard Dawkins for a biologist, no wonder that you might misrepresent Lovelock as a mystic!

Latour, B. (2016). “Why Gaia is not a God of Totality.” Theory, Culture & Society 34 (2-3), pp61-81