The gene can be described as the foundational concept of modern biology. As such, it has spilled over into daily discourse, yet it is acknowledged among biologists to be ill-defined. Here, following a short history of the gene, I analyse critically its role in inheritance, evolution, development, and morphogenesis. Wilhelm Johannsen's genotype-conception, formulated in 1910, has been adopted as the foundation stone of genetics, giving the gene a higher degree of prominence than is justified by the evidence. An analysis of the results of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE) with E. coli bacteria, grown over 60,000 generations, does not support spontaneous gene mutation as the source of variance for natural selection. From this it follows that the gene is not Mendel's unit of inheritance: that must be Johannsen's transmission-conception at the gamete phenotype level, a form of inheritance that Johannsen did not consider. Alternatively, I contend that biology viewed on the bases of thermodynamics, complex system dynamics and self-organisation, provides a new framework for the foundations of biology. In this framework, the gene plays a passive role as a vital information store: it is the phenotype that plays the active role in inheritance, evolution, development, and morphogenesis.

基因可谓是现代生物学的基础概念。因此，它已经蔓延到日常话语中，但生物学家承认它是不明确的。在这里，根据基因的简短历史，我批判性地分析了它在遗传、进化、发育和形态发生中的作用。威廉·约翰森 (Wilhelm Johannsen) 于 1910 年提出的基因型概念已被采纳为遗传学的基石，使基因比证据所证明的更为突出。对大肠杆菌长期进化实验 (LTEE) 结果的分析生长超过 60,000 代的细菌不支持将自发基因突变作为自然选择变异的来源。因此，该基因不是孟德尔的遗传单位：那一定是约翰森在配子表型水平上的传递概念，约翰森没有考虑过这种遗传形式。或者，我认为从热力学、复杂系统动力学和自组织的角度来看生物学，为生物学的基础提供了一个新的框架。在这个框架中，基因作为一个重要的信息储存库扮演着被动的角色：它是在遗传、进化、发育和形态发生中扮演积极角色的表型。