Consilience by E. O. Wilson

Author:E. O. Wilson [Wilson, Edward O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5406-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

TO TAKE behavioral genes into account therefore seems a prudent step when assessing human behavior. Sociobiology (or Darwinian anthropology, or evolutionary psychology, or whatever more politically acceptable term one chooses to call it) offers a key link in the attempt to explain the biological foundation of human nature. By asking questions framed in evolutionary theory, it has already steered research in anthropology and psychology in new directions. Its major research strategy in human studies has been to work from the first principles of population genetics and reproductive biology to predict the forms of social behavior that confer the greatest Darwinian fitness. The predictions are then tested with data taken from ethnographic archives and historical records, as well as from fresh field studies explicitly designed for the purpose. Some of the tests are conducted on preliterate and other traditional societies, whose conservative social practices are likely to resemble most closely those of Paleolithic ancestors. A very few societies in Australia, New Guinea, and South America in fact still have stone-age cultures, which is why anthropologists find them especially interesting. Other tests are conducted with data from modern societies, where fast-evolving cultural norms may no longer be optimally fit. In all these studies a full array of analytic techniques is brought to bear. They include multiple competing hypotheses, mathematical models, statistical analysis, and even the reconstruction of the histories of memes and cultural conventions by the same quantitative procedures used to trace the evolution of genes and species.

In the past quarter-century, human sociobiology has grown into a large and technically complex subject. Nevertheless, it is possible to reduce its primary evolutionary principles to some basic categories, which I will now briefly summarize.

Kin selection is the natural selection of genes based on their effects on individuals carrying them plus the effects the presence of the genes has on all the genetic relatives of the individuals, including parents, children, siblings, cousins, and others who still live and are capable either of reproducing or of affecting the reproduction of blood relatives. Kin selection is especially important in the origin of altruistic behavior. Consider two sisters, who share half their genes by virtue of having the same father and mother. One sacrifices her life, or at least remains childless, in order to help her sister. As a result the sister raises more than twice as many children as she would have otherwise. Since half of her genes are identical to those of her generous sister, the loss in genetic fitness is more than made up by the altruistic nature of the sacrifice. If such actions are predisposed by genes and occur commonly, the genes can spread through the population, even though they induce individuals to surrender personal advantage.

From this simple premise and elaborations of it have come a wealth of predictions about patterns of altruism, patriotism, ethnicity, inheritance rules, adoption practices, and infanticide. Many are novel, and most have held up well under testing.

Parental investment is behavior toward offspring that increases the fitness of the latter at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring.

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