The Altruism Equation

Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness

Lee Alan Dugatkin

188 pages, parution le 01/10/2006

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Résumé

In a world supposedly governed by ruthless survival of the fittest, why do we see acts of goodness in both animals and humans? This problem plagued Charles Darwin in the 1850s as he developed his theory of evolution through natural selection. Indeed, Darwin worried that the goodness he observed in nature could be the Achilles heel of his theory. Ever since then, scientists and other thinkers have engaged in a fierce debate about the origins of goodness that has dragged politics, philosophy, and religion into what remains a major question for evolutionary biology.

The Altruism Equation traces the history of this debate from Darwin to the present through an extraordinary cast of characters-from the Russian prince Petr Kropotkin, who wanted to base society on altruism, to the brilliant biologist George Price, who fell into poverty and succumbed to suicide as he obsessed over the problem. In a final surprising turn, William Hamilton, the scientist who came up with the equation that reduced altruism to the cold language of natural selection, desperately hoped that his theory did not apply to humans.

Hamilton's Rule, which states that relatives are worth helping in direct proportion to their blood relatedness, is as fundamental to evolutionary biology as Newton's laws of motion are to physics. But even today, decades after its formulation, Hamilton's Rule is still hotly debated among those who cannot accept that goodness can be explained by a simple mathematical formula. For the first time, Lee Alan Dugatkin brings to life the people, the issues, and the passions that have surrounded the altruism debate. Readers will be swept along by this fast-paced tale of history, biography, and scientific discovery.

L'auteur - Lee Alan Dugatkin

Lee Alan Dugatkin is Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Louisville. He is the author of many books, including the popular Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees: The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans and Model Systems in Behavioral Ecology (Princeton).

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Sommaire

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Special Difficulty That Might Prove Fatal
Darwin's Bulldog versus the Prince of Evolution
The Greatest Word from Science since Darwin
J.B.S.: The Last Man Who Might Know All There Was to Be Known
Hamilton's Rule
The Price of Kinship
Spreading the Word
Keepers of the Flame
Curator of Mathematical Models
Notes
Index

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Princeton University Press
Auteur(s)	Lee Alan Dugatkin
Parution	01/10/2006
Nb. de pages	188
Format	16 x 24
Couverture	Relié
Poids	499g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780691125909
ISBN13	978-0-691-12590-9