He says he is. There is no evidence whatever for this charge. I think not. The SGM holds that individuals are vehicles for replicators, molecules that can copy themselves 5 . Evolution is possible because the copying is not perfect.
Errors are usually the substitution of one nucleotide for another, changing the codon.
Genes code for proteins and the mutated gene produces a protein which may be different, altering the fitness of the body. Rose's philosophical reductionist would be studying, not the genes, but the nucleotides and the atoms of which they are composed. He will not write a book called The Selfish Nucleotide 6 . P Perhaps a partial philosophical reductionist would stick with the individual genes. This is not even partly philosophical reductionism.