CH. 6 Organisms, Groups and Memes: Replicators or Vehicles?

P. 113
 Like atoms, genes are highly gregarious. They are often strung together along chromosomes, chromosomes are wrapped up in groups in nuclear membranes, enveloped in cytoplasm and enclosed in cell membranes. Cells too are normally not isolated, but cloned to form the huge conglomerates we know as organisms. 

P. 117
 Of course genes are not directly visible to selection. Obviously they are selected by virtue of their phenotypic effects, and certainly they can only be said to have phenotypic effects in concert with hundreds of other genes. But it is the thesis of this book that we should not be trapped into assuming that those phenotypic effects are best regarded as being neatly wrapped up in discrete bodies (or other discrete vehicles). The doctrine of the extended phenotype is that the phenotypic effect of a gene (genetic replicator) is best seen as an effect upon the world at large, and only incidentally upon the individual organism—or any other vehicle—in which it happens to sit.