This view of life Completing the Darwinian revolution

Review by Choice Review

Drawing on examples from sociology, biology, economics, and other fields, Wilson (Binghamton Univ.) argues that applying an evolutionary framework to assist in policy design can help to address some of humanity's toughest challenges, including educational inequality and climate change. Wilson first acknowledges, then compellingly counters, the view that evolutionary thinking applied to human projects gives rise to competition-based systems that exacerbate injustice and inequality. Key to addressing the latter, he argues, is to foster an infrastructure wherein individuals derive benefit from their contributions to the well-being of their peers. The power of evolutionary thinking, argues Wilson, is that it can both explain the origin of multicellular organisms, since individual cells restrain their own division in exchange for metabolic services provided by neighboring cells, and can shed light on the success of certain corporate enterprises, such as fisheries, wherein individual fishermen share in the long-term benefits of prudent resource extraction. The book will engage a broad audience, including scientists, who will value the extensive references and synthesis of scientific work from remarkably disparate fields, as well as more causal readers, who will appreciate Wilson's ability to present complex concepts in a highly accessible, conversational style. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Diane Patricia Genereux, Broad Institute of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

For The Neighborhood Project (2011), biology and anthropology professor Wilson recounted his efforts to retrofit Darwinian principles to improve the quality of life in his own hometown of Binghamton, New York. In his latest work, Wilson aims much higher, arguing that evolutionary theory, when properly applied with the right tools, can play a major role in shaping human social and cultural institutions for our greater collective good. He begins by quickly dispatching the bogeyman of social Darwinism, the outdated philosophy espousing survival of the fittest that led to early-twentieth-century eugenics programs and the Holocaust, since, correctly understood, evolution actually favors groups practicing cooperation and altruism over those with selfish majorities. Wilson's key insight is that policy is an inevitable outgrowth of biology, which he explicates with examples as diverse as vaccine administration and the organizational hierarchies of established businesses. A lucidly written and soundly reasoned proposal for applying evolutionary processes to address our most vexing societal ills. Highly recommended for readers interested in a range of fields, from evolution to economics, education, social welfare, and policy-making.--Carl Hays Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Wilson (Darwin's Cathedral), a Binghamton University biology and anthropology professor, makes a careful, step-by-step argument for adopting an "evolutionary worldview" for understanding social and cultural development, and for using this understanding to guide public policy. Grounding his discussion in Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen's four questions to ask about a product of evolution-about its function, history, mechanism, and developmentA--Wilson proposes evolution as a multilevel process, stretching "from genes to the planet." He focuses on the level of small groups of people, stating that the central driver of evolution in this context is social interaction. For evidence, he brings in a wide array of case studies, from immune reactions to factory assembly lines, arguing that at every level, a balance between addressing individual needs and the common good is ultimately adaptive. Wilson thus rejects both laissez-faire and centralized control-and-command policies in favor of a more inclusive decision-making process throughout society in which people "function in two capacities: as designers of social systems and as participants in the social systems that we design." Readers who take Wilson's bold and clever concept to heart may well be able to apply it to their own families, schools, cities, and communities. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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Review by Library Journal Review

According to evolutionary biologist Wilson (biology & anthropology, SUNY Binghamton; Does Altruism Exist?), "biology" should be redefined to include both behavior and culture (learned information) as these, too, are products of evolution. Wilson calls this all-encompassing outlook on life an "evolutionary worldview," and his goals are to demonstrate how such a perspective can be used as a powerful framework for improving the human condition and why biology should be the foundation of public policy. His approach involves first asking a series of questions (borrowed from the field of animal behavior) to get at the facts of a given issue. The second part involves following eight principles (borrowed from economics) designed to maximize the efficacy of self-directed groups (any collection of people organized to get something done). Wilson includes real-world stories about organizations that have put this philosophy into practice and invites readers to roll up their sleeves and give the evolutionary worldview a try within their own groups. VERDICT Readers from all backgrounds will find the concepts underlying this philosophy clearly explained and may even discover that an evolutionary worldview has relevance to their own lives. Recommended for those who enjoyed the author's Evolution for Everyone.-Cynthia Lee Knight, Hunterdon Cty. Historical Soc., Flemington, NJ © Copyright 2019. 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.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

An excellent argument that evolution applies to culture as well as organisms.Most people, the uneducated included, have no objection to the concept of the Darwinian evolution of plants and animals. Evolution of humans won over scientists long ago. Applied to human behavior in the form of politics, economics, business, and war, evolutionary theories existed before Darwin but acquired a bad reputation by equating Darwinian "fitness" with wealth, social status, and belligerence. Evolutionary biologist Wilson (Biology and Anthropology/Binghamton Univ.; Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, 2015, etc.), the president of the Evolution Institute, points out that the 20th century was nearly over before scientists began to examine human institutions without the ideological distraction of social Darwinism. Ironically, this happened because of spectacular advances in biology, especially genetics: "Evolutionbecame associated with an incapacity for change (being stuck with our genes), with our capacity for change somehow residing outside the orbit of evolution. The term Social Darwinism' helps to buttress this bizarre configuration of ideas in ways that are almost childish, once they are seen clearly." A masterful educator, Wilson begins with basics and then carefully amplifies them. To understand any product of evolution (a hand, cancer, aggression), one must address four areas: function, history, mechanism, and how it develops. A snowflake may be more complex than a hand, but it doesn't qualify because it has no function. The problem of evil torments theologians but yields to evolutionary analysis. Thus, altruism seems a trait for wimps because selfish individuals prosper, but a group where everyone cooperates always outcompetes a group with selfish members. The author emphasizes that cultural evolution is a multilevel process. A learned behavior spreads by benefiting individuals compared to other individuals in the same group or the whole group compared to competing groups.One of the major advances in modern biology receives a splendid overview. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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from the Introduction:   Whatever you think you currently know about evolution, please move it to one side to make room for what I am about to share in the pages of this book. I think you'll find that my argument doesn't fall into any current category. Politically it isn't left, right, or liber­tarian. It's not anti-religious and it enables us to think more deeply about religion than ever before. Above all, it moves us in the direc­tion of sustainable living at all scales. Who doesn't want to improve their personal well-being; their families, neighborhoods, schools, and businesses; their governments and economies; and their stew­ardship of the natural world? These goals are within reach--but only if we see the world through the lens of the right theory.   To begin, we need to do a bit of clear thinking on what science is. It is commonly portrayed as a contest between theories that are based on a common stock of observations. First we see and then we theorize. Theories that do the best job of explaining the obser­vations are accepted, only to be challenged by another round of theories, and so on, bringing our knowledge of the world closer to reality.   The problem with this view of science is that the common stock of observations is nearly infinite. We cannot possibly attend to everything, so a theory--broadly defined as a way of interpreting the world around us--is required to tell us what to pay attention to and what to ignore. We must theorize to see. A new theory doesn't just posit a new interpretation of old observations. It opens doors to new observations to which the old theories were blind.   Albert Einstein understood this point when he wrote, "It is the theory that decides what we can observe." He was corresponding with his colleague Werner Heisenberg about electron orbits inside atoms. There was no way to directly observe electron orbits at the time, and Heisenberg thought it prudent to theorize on the basis of what can be observed. Einstein understood that theorizing about entities that cannot yet be seen can lead to useful predictions about what can be seen, but which had previously gone unnoticed.   Charles Darwin experienced the blindness that comes from lack of the right theory as a young man on a fossil hunting expedition with his professor Adam Sedgwick. The valley in Wales that they visited had been scoured by glaciers and therefore had no fossils. The evidence for glaciers lay all around them--the scored rocks, the perched boulders, the lateral and terminal moraines, all typical of a glaciated landscape. Yet Darwin and Sedgwick were blind to the evidence because the theory that vast sheets of ice had once covered much of the northern hemisphere had not yet been proposed. They didn't know what they should have been looking for. Darwin commented in his autobiography that "a house burnt down by fire did not tell its story more plainly than did this valley. If it had still been filled by a glacier, the phenomena would have been less distinct than they are now."   Darwin went on to contribute his own eye-opening discover­ies with his theory of natural selection. The theory is amazingly simple: 1) Individuals vary; 2) Their differences often have conse­quences for survival and reproduction; 3) Offspring resemble their parents. Given these three conditions, populations will change over time. Traits that contribute to survival and reproduction will become more common. Individuals will become well adapted to their environments.   The theory of natural selection is so simple and rests upon such firm assumptions that it seems obvious in retrospect. As Thomas Huxley famously remarked upon encountering it for the first time, "How stupid of me not to have thought of that!" Nevertheless, for those who first started to explore the implications, it was as if the scales had fallen from their eyes. Wherever they looked--the fos­sil record, comparative anatomy, the geographical distribution of species, and the many wonderful contrivances that adapt organ­isms to their environments--they found confirming evidence. In the contest of theories, the biblical account of creation didn't stand a chance. By 1973, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky could declare that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."   My Story   I was a graduate student at Michigan State University in 1973 and my personal experience can help to explain what Dobzhansky meant by his imperious-sounding proclamation. As someone who loved the outdoors and aspired to be a scientist, I decided to become an ecologist so I could study animals in their natural environments. In keeping with the old joke about experts knowing more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing, my research was focused on the feeding behavior of a tiny aquatic crus­tacean called a copepod. Even for this esoteric subject, the possibili­ties were endless. Copepods might select their food in any number of ways and a theory was needed to narrow the possibilities. Evo­lutionary theory predicts that copepods should feed in ways that enhance their survival and reproduction. This could mean maxi­mizing the amount of energy harvested, feeding in a way that avoids being eaten by predators, or other possibilities that depend upon the details of the environment. No theory leads directly to the right answer. The best that a theory can do is to narrow the field of pos­sibilities. In this case, I predicted that copepods might selectively graze on larger algae rather than harvesting algae without respect to size, which would increase their rate of energy intake. My predic­tion turned out to be correct and resulted in my first publication in 1973. I had added one small but solid brick to the edifice of scien­tific knowledge. I couldn't vouch for Dobzhansky's claim for all of biology, but I could testify that evolutionary theory had helped to make sense of my little corner.   Later that year I traveled to Costa Rica to attend a course in tropical ecology run by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), a network of field stations run by a consortium of universi­ties that is still going strong after fifty years. It was a life-changing experience. Anyone who loves nature is thrilled by the tropics, but we were seeing all of those wonderful plants and animals through the lens of evolutionary theory--the same lens that informed my esoteric research. I realized that I didn't need to spend my life studying copepods. I could pick any creature or topic that interested me and quickly start asking intelligent questions based on the logic of evolutionary theory. It was the opposite of the old joke about experts knowing more and more about less and less. Becoming an expert in evolutionary theory was like receiving a passport to the study of all aspects of life.   Ever since, I have used evolutionary theory to study a multitude of creatures and topics. I have also witnessed my field of biology become ever more sophisticated in observational techniques. The modern biologist is like Darwin with superhuman powers of observation. He or she can catalog entire genomes and track the patterns of gene expression (epigenetics); can trace neural pathways inside the brain; can monitor the movement of animals via satellite; can measure climate change in the distant past with a high degree of accuracy; can experiment with evolution in the laboratory using microbes that can be frozen and brought back to life to compare with their own descendants.   These technological marvels bring the common stock of observations well beyond anything imagined in Darwin's day. The role of evolutionary theory in making sense of all this information is more important than ever before. Dobzhansky's 1973 statement that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution has withstood the test of time. Yet for many people the word "biol­ogy" conjures up a different set of associations than words such as "human" or "culture." To proceed further, we need to expand the scope of what we consider biology.   How About Us?   Darwin was convinced that his theory could explain the length and breadth of humanity, in addition to everything else more typically associated with biology. He observed and kept notes on his chil­dren with the same discerning eye that he observed barnacles and orchids. Following upon On the Origin of Species, he developed his thoughts at length in The Descent of Man and other works.   Yet, as evolutionary biology became a branch of science, the study of humanity did not proceed along the same track. The prob­lem was not just the collision with religious belief that remains with us today. Some people who were fully comfortable with a natural­istic conception of the world still had an allergic reaction to evolu­tionary theory in relation to human affairs. As early as the 1870s, the threat that they perceived was given a name: social Darwinism.   According to most people's conception of social Darwinism, the haves and have-nots of society are equivalent to the fit and unfit of evolutionary theory. It is nature's way for the fit to replace the unfit. Interfering with the process would degrade the species and lead to the collapse of society. It is not selfish for the fit to replace the unfit; it is a moral imperative. Policies that flow from this logic include laissez-faire capitalism, withholding welfare from the poor, forced sterilization, and genocide.   After the excesses of the Gilded Age, the eugenics policies enacted in America and Britain, and the genocidal horrors of World War II, the idea of using evolutionary theory to formulate public policy became unthinkable. The stigma carried over to the aca­demic disciplines classified as the social sciences and humanities. While these areas of study developed into sophisticated bodies of knowledge, they largely avoided engaging with evolutionary theory. Most humanist scholars were happy to accept Darwin's theory for the study of the rest of life, our physical bodies, and a few basic instincts such as to eat and have sex, but insisted that our rich behavioral and cultural diversity operated according to a different set of rules. Excerpted from This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution by David Sloan Wilson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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