 Despite the criticisms levelled against it, population genetics has certainly had a major influence on our understanding of evolution. For example, the well-known ‘gene’s eye’ view of evolution, developed by G.C. Williams (1966), W. D. Hamilton (1964) and R. Dawkins (1976), stems directly from population-genetic reasoning; indeed, important aspects of gene’s eye thinking were already present in Fisher’s writings (Okasha 2008, Ewens 2011). Proponents of the gene’s eye view argue that genes are the real beneficiaries of the evolutionary process; genotypes and organisms are mere temporary manifestations. Natural selection is at root a matter of competition between gene lineages for greater representation in the gene pool; creating organisms with adaptive features is a ‘strategy’ that genes have devised to secure their posterity (Dawkins 1976, 1982). Gene’s eye thinking has revolutionised many areas of evolutionary biology in the last fifty years, particularly in the field of animal behaviour (cf. Agren 2021), but in many ways it is simply a colourful gloss on the conception of evolution implicit in the formalisms of population genetics.