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Author Topic:   ‘The Social Conquest of Earth,’ by Edward O. Wilson
Tangle
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Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
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Message 1 of 1 (659991)
04-20-2012 3:32 AM


This book by one of our greatest living biologists looks likely to be very controversial as it deals with both philosophical and religious issues AND the big evolutionary issue of kin selection vs group selection.
He rejects kin selection as "wrong". Whoops.
The dilemma of good and evil was created by multilevel selection, in which individual selection and group selection act together on the same individual, but largely in opposition to each other, he writes. Individual selection . . . shapes instincts in each member that are fundamentally selfish. . . . Group selection shapes instincts that tend to make individuals altruistic toward one another (but not toward members of other groups). Individual selection is responsible for much of what we call sin, while group selection is responsible for the greater part of virtue. Together they have created the conflict between the poorer and the better angels of our nature.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.../13/gIQAvO7kFT_story_1.html
Just about to buy it.....

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

  
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