X-Message-Number: 2846
From: (David Stodolsky)
Subject: CRYONICS: Group Selection in Evolution
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 21:29:53 +0200 (MET DST)
From: "Stevan Harnad" <>
Message-Id: <>
To:
> Subject: Group Selection in Evolution: BBS Call for Commentators
X-Charset: ISO_8859-1
X-Char-Esc: 29
Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article by:
David Sloan Wilson & Elliott Sober
on:
"RE-INTRODUCING GROUP SELECTION TO THE HUMAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES"
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to
become a BBS Associate, please send email to:
or or write to:
BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542 [tel: 609-921-7771]
To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp according to the instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________
RE-INTRODUCING GROUP SELECTION TO THE HUMAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
David Sloan Wilson
Department of Biological Sciences
State University of New York at Binghamton
Binghamton New York 13902-6000
Elliott Sober
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin
5185 Helen C. White Hall
600 North Park Street
Madison Wisconsin 53706
KEYWORDS: culture; evolution; group selection; kin selection;
inclusive fitness; natural selection; reciprocity; social
organization; units of selection.
ABSTRACT: In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are
sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be
reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is
opposed by a more individualistic view that treats social
organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to
biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of
natural selection at the group level. During the 1960's and 70's
most biologists rejected group selection as an important
evolutionary force but a positive literature began to grow during
the 70's and is rapidly expanding today. We review this recent
literature and its implications for human evolutionary biology. We
show that the rejection of group selection was based on a misplaced
emphasis on genes as "replicators" which is in fact irrelevant to
the question of whether groups can be like individuals in their
functional organization. The fundamental question is whether social
groups and other higher-level entities can be "vehicles" of
selection. When this elementary fact is recognized, group selection
emerges as an important force in nature and ostensible
alternatives, such as kin selection and reciprocity, reappear as
special cases of group selection. The result is a unified theory of
natural selection that operates on a nested hierarchy of units.
The vehicle-based theory makes it clear that group selection is an
important force to consider in human evolution. Humans can
facultatively span the full range from self-interested individuals
to "organs" of group-level "organisms." Human behavior not only
reflects the balance between levels of selection but it can also
alter the balance through the construction of social structures
that have the effect of reducing fitness differences within groups,
concentrating natural selection (and functional organization) at
the group level. These social structures and the cognitive
abilities that produce them allow group selection to be important
even among large groups of unrelated individuals.
--------------------------------------------------------------
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.wilson). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
The file is also retrievable using archie, gopher, veronica, etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------
To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp princeton.edu
or
ftp 128.112.128.1
When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
Enter password as per instructions (make sure to include the specified @),
and then change directories with:
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
To show the available files, type:
ls
Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.wilson
When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit
These files can also be retrieved using gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
----------
Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
and
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:
help
for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).
JANET users without ftp can instead utilise the file transfer facilities
at sites uk.ac.ft-relay or uk.ac.nsf.sun. Full details are available on
request.
-------------------------------------------------------------
David S. Stodolsky, PhD Internet:
Peder Lykkes Vej 8, 4. tv. Internet:
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark Voice + Fax: + 45 32 97 66 74
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2846