Evolution and the Levels of Selection

ISBN: 9780199267972 出版年：2007 页码：276 Okasha, Samir Clarendon Press

Do traits evolve because they are good for the group in which they occur? Darwin thought so, arguing that this was the right way to think about the barbed stinger of the honeybee and human morality. The idea that selection can favor traits that are good for the group as well as traits that are good for the individual was also part of the biologist’s toolkit during the modern synthesis. Then, in the 1960s, everything changed. In the space of a few years, George C. Williams published Adaptation and Natural Selection and W. D. Hamilton developed his ideas on kin selection and inclusive fitness. A few years later, John Maynard Smith and George Price laid the foundations for evolutionary game theory. The idea of group selection was attacked not just as factually mistaken but as an example of fuzzy thinking. It was also attacked for being unnecessary—kin selection and game theory were said to deal adequately with apparently altruistic traits, and without using the tainted “g-word.” This anti–group selection consensus was summarized in Richard Dawkins’s popularization, The Selfish Gene. Though many biologists regarded the critique of group selection as a fundamental step forward, there were dissenters. In 1970, Richard Lewontin wrote a review article in which he described the