Review by Choice Review
This is a maddening book. Wilson (biology and anthropology, Binghamton Univ.) is a successful popularizer of evolutionary thought (Evolution for Everyone, CH, Oct'07, 45-0802; Darwin's Cathedral, CH, May'03, 40-5187). This book purports to be about the Binghamton Neighborhood Project, which aims to improve "my city of Binghamton" (as he says each time) using evolutionary principles. Along the way, Wilson provides some interesting examples of different kinds of animal adaptations. He also offers an extended travelogue about the various other conferences he attended and think-tank retreats he organized. In the end, though, the author offers almost nothing about any actual improvements wrought by the Binghamton Neighborhood Project. Moreover, his definition of "evolution" is so encompassing--any process of variation and selection, including all of human culture and policy--that its connection to biological evolution is strained. Summing Up: Optional. Public libraries. B. Weston Centre College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
MY undergraduate students, especially those bound for medical school, often ask why they have to study evolution. It won't cure disease, and really, how useful is evolution to the average person? My response is that while evolutionary biology can explain, for example, the origin of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, we shouldn't see evolution as a cure for human woes. Its value is explanatory: to tell us how, when and why we got here (by "we," I mean "every organism") and to show us how all species are related. In the end, evolution is the greatest tale of all, for it's true. David Sloan Wilson, on the other hand, sees evolutionary biology as a panacea for the world's ills. By understanding "human nature" - that is, the behaviors and attitudes instilled in our ancestors by natural selection - we will, he claims, finally be able to solve problems like poor education, dysfunctional cities, bad economics, mental illness and ethnic cleansing. "Evolutionary science," Wilson argues, "will eventually prove so useful on a daily basis that we will wonder how we survived without it. I'm here to make that day come sooner rather than later, starting with my own city of Binghamton." "The Neighborhood Project" describes Wilson's ambitious proposal for using evolutionary biology to raise up Binghamton, a down-at-the heels town of about 50,000 in upstate New York. An evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York there, Wilson formerly worked on toads and mites, but has now adopted his own town as a study organism. Wilson is well known for his controversial work on evolution via "group selection." While modern evolutionary theory emphasizes natural selection acting on genes and individuals, Wilson sees an important role for selection acting on entire social groups, particularly in the evolution of "prosociality": that complex of behaviors, including altruism and compassion, that underlies human cooperation. Such helping behavior seems hard to evolve by conventional selection, since it's easily subverted by cheaters who accept help but don't reciprocate. That's where group selection comes in. If our ancestors lived in small bands containing different proportions of helpers and cheaters, those bands with more helpers could thrive and spawn similar groups. It's this differential proliferation of groups, Wilson claims, that has made humans so cooperative. Group selection isn't widely accepted by evolutionists for several reasons. First, it's not an efficient way to select for traits, like altruistic behavior, that are supposed to be detrimental to the individual but good for the group. Groups divide to form other groups much less often than organisms reproduce to form other organisms, so group selection for altruism would be unlikely to override the tendency of each group to quickly lose its altruists through natural selection favoring cheaters. Further, we simply have little evidence that selection on groups has promoted the evolution of any trait. Finally, other, more plausible evolutionary forces, like direct selection on individuals for reciprocal support, could have made us prosocial. These reasons explain why only a few biologists, like Wilson and E.O. Wilson (no relation), advocate group selection as the evolutionary source of cooperation. Nevertheless, David Sloan Wilson is convinced that organizing Binghamton's citizens into amiably competing groups can turn it into the proverbial City on a Hill. His passion sometimes verges on obsession, as if (to paraphrase the Blues Brothers) he's on a mission from Darwin. The backbone of Wilson's plan is a psychological survey of Binghamton schoolchildren, measuring their prosociality and mapping it onto their neighborhoods. Prosociality is determined by the level of agreement with statements like "I am trying to help solve social problems." At the same time, support from their environment is measured by students' agreement with questions like "I have a family that gives love and support" or "I have good neighbors that help me succeed." While Wilson makes much of the correlation between prosociality and a supportive environment, arguing that prosocial nature comes from prosocial nurture, both statistics derive in fact from self-report, so there is no independent evaluation of students' environments. After using the survey to identify neighborhoods with higher or lower degrees of prosociality, Wilson's strategy is to improve the city by having them compete. This involves neighborhood contests to design city parks, studies of churches to determine why some are better able to recruit and retain members, as well as projects less obviously connected with prosociality, like collecting DNA from older citizens to tie their genes to their life experiences. Oddly, most of the book has nothing to do with the Binghamton Neighborhood Project, but rather with Wilson's vision of how evolutionary biology can change the world. Education, for instance, will be transformed by going back to the ways of our distant ancestors, who gave their children no formal instruction but let them learn from unstructured play and interaction with older kids. (Wilson's modern example is the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts.) Economic theory will be revolutionized by realizing that humans aren't selfish agents, but have been imbued by group selection with feelings of fairness and altruism. Juvenile delinquency will be eradicated by keeping high-risk children apart, avoiding the negative reinforcement that inhibits prosociality. I applaud Wilson's aspiration to improve his town and his world, but the evolution-centered approach is rife with problems. How much of "human nature" comes from evolution, and how much from culture? For many behaviors, like religion and criminality, we simply have no idea. Nor does it matter when it comes to solving most problems. Maybe we long for green spaces because our ancestors evolved in those environments, or maybe not, but all we need to know is that we like them. We might have learned hunting and speech from free-form "education" on the savanna, but it's hard to see how reading, engineering and mathematics can be acquired in the same way. Our world is no longer the one in which we evolved. WILSON further undermines his case by repeatedly counting as "evolutionary" any human activity involving "variation and selection," including committees that have to decide between alternative plans and children who learn to discard those behaviors that don't bring them rewards. But these issues have nothing to do with biological evolution; they are superficial and meaningless parallels with natural selection's winnowing of genetic variation. By far the best parts of the book are the short chapters, called "parables," that Wilson interpolates as lessons we should learn from other species (wasps, for example, teach us about conflict versus cooperation, crows about culture in other species). These show his superb ability to communicate a deep love of biology. But these parables have little to do with the Neighborhood Project. And Wilson's enthusiasm has a way of shading into hubris, as when he proclaims: "Now that my intellectual life and my everyday life have been thrown together, I can almost feel the connections taking place inside my head. Like a Shakespearean play, the length and breadth of human nature are being enacted in front of me on a local stage." Five years into the Neighborhood Project, it has apparently yielded only one published paper, which gives the results of the prosociality survey. The Binghamton parks contest went belly-up, as people weren't interested in competing according to Wilson's schedule. Other plans, like the big DNA survey, Seem too ambitious to reach fruition. Wilson clearly means well, and his efforts exemplify the prosociality he so admires. But this ungainly farrago of a book rests on the shaky pillars of a questionable premise and Wilson's need to connect his vocation with his altruism. The best that can be said of "The Neighborhood Project" is that it's premature. Down at the heels: Binghamton, N.Y., hopes to see better days. Jerry A. Coyne is a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago. His latest book is "Why Evolution Is True"; he blogs at whyevolutionistrue.com.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 11, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Wilson's Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (2007) took evolutionary theory out of academia and into his readers' daily lives, demonstrating how natural selection plays a significant role in everyday society. Now Wilson describes the results of applying those lessons on a citywide scale, in this case his own hometown, Binghamton, New York. Undertaking the ambitious assignment of determining the value of evolutionary principles when it comes to such common urban problems as teen delinquency and abandoned real estate, in 2006 Wilson launched the Binghamton Neighborhood Project. His first task was gathering information on neighborhood well-being by taking photographs and using novel surveys such as tracking Christmas decorations and garage sales to create a civic virtue map. He then spearheaded urban renewal programs, such as a Design Your Own Park competition, that are still ongoing. Apart from Wilson's always fascinating digressions on biological diversity, from water striders to wasps, his work presents a compelling model of applied evolutionary science for other cities to emulate.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wilson (Evolution for Everyone), an evolutionary biologist at the University of Binghamton, explains how Charles Darwin's concept of the "tangled bank," which describes how species are influenced by their surroundings, can be used to understand human psychology in order to build healthier societies. Arguing that the "Ivory Archipelago" of disparate disciplines-psychology, anthropology, sociology, urban planning, economics, even theology-should be united under the umbrella of evolutionary studies, Wilson brings various methodologies to his investigation of the city as a living, evolving organism much like a coral reef. The Neighborhood Project, an organization Wilson founded to rejuvenate his hometown of Binghamton, N.Y., provides a test case-it uses evolutionary theories to analyze behavioral data and improve quality of life through a more holistic approach. Wilson searches for how our habitats can influence our propensity for civic engagement and environmental awareness, and our physical and financial health. Although the book meanders-Wilson gives a vivid, in-depth description of several scientific studies, and offers a biography for each scientist he cites-the tangents are mostly pleasurable and provide more evidence for how lives, like ideas, intersect in fascinating ways. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Wilson (Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives) is an evolutionary biologist on the faculty of SUNY-Binghamton, and the Binghamton Neighborhood Project (BNP), referred to in the title, is one of his current projects. The BNP is an attempt on the part of Wilson and others to use evolutionary biology to help restore, revive, and improve the city of Binghamton. Wilson refers to the project repeatedly throughout the book, but exactly how Binghamton is improving and will be improved by this project is elusive. We are provided, in multiple chapters, with numerous short "evolution" stories of how scientists Wilson knows and works with became scientists. He also applies concepts of evolution (in its broadest sense) to the immune system, Teilhard de Chardin, belief systems and religion, the afterlife, and many other subjects. While thoughtful, the results do not seem completely focused as the chapters move from topic to topic with only the glue of evolutionary biology and the BNP to hold them together. Verdict For large collections in biology and urban studies/government.-Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences, RTP, NC (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An evolutionary biologist applies his science to making the city of Binghamton, N.Y., a better place to live, and in the telling, illuminates evolution and spells out his efforts to increase understanding of it.Wilson (Biology and Anthropology/Binghamton Univ.; Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives, 2007, etc.) argues that the evolutionary paradigm can explain cultural as well as biological diversity, and by applying science one can use evolutionary theory to solve everyday problems. He has chosen his city of Binghamton to demonstrate how regularly analyzing a city as a multicellular organism can provide the information needed to bring about effective changes. His first task, gathering information, involved putting results of an attitude questionnaire into a geographical information system in order to create a civic virtue map showing the relative well-being of neighborhoodsthat is, how social and supportive they were. To test the map's validity, Wilson and his colleagues also took photographs, conducted lost-letter experiments and tallied the number of Halloween and Christmas decorations and garage sales. Further research is now adding genetic information to his database, and he plans to include a study of spirituality and religion. To create the environmental changes needed to initiate behavioral changes in neighborhoods with low well-being ratings, he launched the Binghamton Neighborhood Project, a collaboration between the university and community partners to improve the quality of life on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. A current initiative is the Design Your Own Park competition. In this wide-ranging and highly readable account, Wilson also regales readers with chatty essays on social insects, gentle profiles of colleagues, a capsule history of Seventh Day Adventism and stories of professional growth and accomplishment: his launching of an evolutionary studies program at Binghamton University, his role in founding the think tank Evolution Institute, even his wife's research on crows.The city of Binghamton tends to get lost in the many detours, but the side trips are mostly pleasurable, informative and worthwhile.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
