Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others
by David Sloan Wilson
Yale University Press/ Templeton Press, 180 pp., $27.50
Altruism may seem a good thingunless you happen to be an evolutionary biologist. Then it may seem a mixture of a mystery and a curse. The reason isnt hard to see. How could a ruthless process like Darwinian natural selection give rise to altruistic organisms, human or nonhuman, that act in ways that are costly to themselves and helpful to others? Darwin himself was aware of the difficulty and offered some tentative solutions, but it was during the twentieth century that altruism became the subject of nearly fetishistic attention among evolutionary biologists.
One imaginable solution is to deny that altruism really exists in nature or to claim that its so rare as to be unworthy of serious attention. Another solution is to construct clever theories that show how natural selection is actually expected to yield altruism. Such theories typically hinge on the level at which natural selection acts. Does it select for fitter organisms, or fitter genes, or populations, or species? Indeed the problem of altruism and the so-called levels-of-selection problem have become nearly inseparable.
David Sloan Wilson has focused on these twin biological problems for several decades. Wilson, the SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, is widely regarded by biologists as a partisan in this debate. He has been the indefatigable champion of one particular theory, multilevel selection, for much of his career. This theory, it seems fair to say, has been a minority view among evolutionists. Ask one how altruism evolves and you are very unlikely to hear by multilevel selection.
But Wilson, who has written several books on evolution, does something unexpected in his new book. He announces that the problem of altruism has been definitively solved and that the levels-of-selection debate has been finally resolved. In fact its so resolved, he tells us, that it remains of interest only to historians of science. Does Altruism Exist? aims to present this postresolution view of how natural selection acts to the general reader.
As you might guess, Wilsons own theory fares well in this postresolution view. Wilson thinks that multilevel selection (which Ill explain below) not only accounts for altruism, it also provides a powerful way to think about, and even to help guide, the evolution of human social institutions like economies. The connection between how natural selection shapes the biological world and how human social institutions are arranged may not be obvious, but Wilson believes that the connection is both deep and important.
To begin at the end, Wilsons answer to his titular question is yes, altruism exists. But getting to this answer requires some work. Wilson starts by distinguishing actions from thoughts. Thoughts, feelings, and rhetoric matter when it comes to altruism only insofar as they motivate actions that actually improve the welfare of a group. The actions that most matter are those that contribute to group-level functional organization: altruistic behavior by an individual can contribute to the smooth functioning of some group, whether an ant colony or a band of human hunters.
How can this smooth functioning of a group evolve? Wilson is certain that its not by selecting for the fittest individuals within a group, as the popular picture of natural selection would suggest. The reason is simple. Tradeoffs are the norm in life and when individuals act to further their own interests they generally dont further the interests of the group. Indeed individuals can often do best by cheating, that is by shirking their group duties and looking out for numero uno.
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The Biology of Being Good to Others
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