Article: Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again

Group selection, a theory whose time has come...again

Sociobiology, the discipline founded on Darwin's theory of group evolution,
is in theoretical disarray. In a landmark article for the December issue of
the Quarterly Review of Biology, eminent evolutionary scientists David Sloan
Wilson and Edward O. Wilson usher in a new era in evolutionary science.

"Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to
each individual man and his children over the other men of the same
tribe...an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an
immense advantage to one tribe over another."

With these words, Charles Darwin proposed an evolutionary explanation for
morality and pro-social behaviors- individuals behaving for the good of
their group, often at their own expense-that anticipated the future
discipline of Sociobiology. A century after this famous passage was
published in The Descent of Man (1871), however, Darwin's explanation based
on group selection had become taboo and has not recovered since.

In a landmark article for The Quarterly Review of Biology, "Rethinking the
Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology," eminent evolutionary scientists
David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson-whose book Sociobiology:The New
Synthesis brought widespread attention to the field in 1975-call for an end
to forty years of confusion and divergent theories.

They propose a new consensus and theoretical foundation that affirms Darwin'
s original conjecture and is supported by the latest biological findings.

Wilson and Wilson trace much of the confusion in the field to the 1960's,
when most evolutionists rejected "for the good of the group" thinking and
insisted that all adaptations must be explained in terms of individual
self-interest. In an even more reductionistic move, genes were called "the
fundamental unit of selection," as if this was an argument against group
selection. Scientific dogma became entrenched in popular culture with the
publication of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976). Although evidence
in favor of group selection began accumulating almost immediately after its
rejection, its taboo status prevented a systematic re-evaluation of the
field until now.

Based on current theory and evidence, Wilson and Wilson show that natural
selection is unequivocally a multilevel process, as Darwin originally
envisioned, and that adaptations can evolve at all levels of the biological
hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems. They conclude with a rallying cry that
paraphrases Rabbi Hillel: "Selfishness beats altruism within groups.
Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary,"
Wilson and Wilson free sociobiology to once again pursue all lines of
inquiry within its discipline.

Source: University of Chicago
http://www.physorg.com/news115476686.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek


.

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