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Selfish Genes to Social Beings is a new history of life told from a different perspective: cooperation. Beginning with the heroic story of rescuers in the post-earthquake rubble of Mexico City, Jonathan Slivertown reveals the universal rules of cooperation that apply throughout the history of life.
List of contents
- Part One: Groups
- 1: Topos and Narcos
- 2: A river of glowing light
- 3: From selfish genes to social beings
- 4: Big steak or big mistake?
- Part Two: Individuals
- 5: Matryoshka
- 6: Odd couples
- 7: Phytosympathies
- 8: Good Companions
- Part Three: Cells
- 9: A Brand-New Bag
- 10: Three-card trick
- 11: That green new thing
- 12: From solitude to solidarity
- Part Four: Genes
- 13: Ordering the primordial soup
- 14: Peas and Justice
- 15: Naked selfishness
- 16: Coda: the cornucopia of cooperation
- Glossary
- References
About the author
Jonathan Silvertown is an evolutionary biologist who has published widely on plant population biology. He is the author of eight books, including Dinner with
Darwin: Food, Drink, and Evolution and, most recently,
The Comedy of Error: Why Evolution Made Us Laugh. Formerly Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, and Chair of Technology-Enhanced Science Education in Biological Sciences, he is now, following retirement, an Honorary Professor in the Institute.
Summary
Selfish Genes to Social Beings is a new history of life told from a different perspective: cooperation. Beginning with the heroic story of rescuers in the post-earthquake rubble of Mexico City, Jonathan Slivertown reveals the universal rules of cooperation that apply throughout the history of life.
