Hobbes spoke of nature red in tooth and fang. Darwin seemed to agree. But in more modern times, the role of altruism in evolution has caught many scientists' attention. Soldier and worker ants lay down their lives to protect their queen. The alpha male and female in a wolf pack get to breed, while the other wolves help insure the survival of their cubs. This sort of altruistic behavior is no longer much in doubt. What is hotly contested is the reason behind the behavior. The article that is driving this heated debate appeared in NATURE last March. Here's the abstract:
Eusociality, in which some individuals reduce their own lifetime reproductive potential to raise the offspring of others, underlies the most advanced forms of social organization and the ecologically dominant role of social insects and humans. For the past four decades kin selection theory, based on the concept of inclusive fitness, has been the major theoretical attempt to explain the evolution of eusociality. Here we show the limitations of this approach. We argue that standard natural selection theory in the context of precise models of population structure represents a simpler and superior approach, allows the evaluation of multiple competing hypotheses, and provides an exact framework for interpreting empirical observations.
E.O. Wilson, a pioneer o sociobiology, is one of the co-authors. [Nowak, Tarnita and Wilson, "The Evolution of Eusociology," 466 NATURE 7310]
Here's what the Chronicle of Higher Education commented in part:
The phenomenon is called eusociality, and it's long been explained by the kin-selection theory. The scientist who quantified that notion was W.D. Hamilton, who calculated that the cost of certain generous actions was offset by the degree to which the do-gooder was related to his beneficiaries. Hamilton's rule has been cited countless times, repeated in biology textbooks, memorized by undergraduates everywhere. Ironically, it was Mr. Wilson who helped popularize Hamilton's insights.
Now Mr. Wilson has joined with Mr. Nowak to announce that kin selection is not necessary, that it doesn't really apply to most cases of altruistic behavior, and that biologists have been more or less deluding themselves for decades. This is not how you make friends at conferences.
No one is saying that organisms don't cooperate: They clearly do. What Mr. Nowak and his co-authors are asserting is that the dominant model for understanding this cooperation, by placing such a strong emphasis on genetic relatedness, is seriously flawed. Relatedness matters less than biologists have supposed, they argue. And rather than requiring a separate model, cooperation can be accounted for using good old natural selection.
Apparently many in the field are calling the article "bunk," according to the Chronicle, despite the status of two of the three co-authors.
Is this anything more than an esoteric academic squabble? I think it is in the sense that whatever drives the urge to altruism should be cultivated in human societies. Understanding whether it requires kinship (The Godfather: "Never take sides against your family.") or not could be a critical consideration.
There are two other ways [besides a naive faith in love of all mankind] of understanding altruism. One way, adopted by David Hume in the eighteenth century and by Bernard Williams as well as some feminist thinkers in the twentieth, characterizes altruism in terms of particular benevolent dispositions, desires, or affections. According to this view, you help others because you love them. Hume denied that we have the universal love of humankind to which Hutcheson and the Christian philosophers appealed, but thought that such benevolent dispositions as parental love and friendship were morally important character traits essential for virtue. Hume also thought that we possess the capacity to act from sympathy. When you see someone in distress, sympathy leads you to feel distress, which in turn motivates you to alleviate your distress by alleviating theirs. Sympathy enables us to extend our love for particular individuals and smaller groups to larger groups of people.
Source: bookrags.com
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