X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Group selection


Group selection

Herbert Gintis examines cultural evolution of group selection with a more statistical method, offering evidence that societies that promote pro-social norms, as in group selection, have higher survival rates than societies that do not.

First, some authors have shown that the argument that haplodiploid inheritance, characteristic of the Hymenoptera, creates a strong selection pressure towards nonreproductive castes is mathematically flawed.


Evaluative diversity

In Unto Others: the Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998), Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson demonstrated that evaluative diversity could evolve through group selection.

The Selfish Genius

However a generally positive reception has been seen amongst proponents of group selection and Philip Ball wrote a largely positive review in the Times that acknowledges she is right to "call time on a Whiggish view of the history of evolution".


see also

Simon Conway Morris

Whether the "it" be that of Richard Dawkins' reductionist gene-centred worldpicture, the "universal acid" of Daniel Dennett's meaningless Darwinism, or David Sloan Wilson's faith in group selection (not least to explain the role of human religions), we certainly need to acknowledge each provides insights but as total explanations of what we see around us they are, to put it politely, somewhat incomplete.

The Culture of Critique series

John Tooby, past president of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society and a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, insists that MacDonald is not an evolutionary psychologist, and that he advocates models incorporating "group-selection theory", a generally discredited view of natural selection.