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From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. Jonathan Birch explores how the three key explanatory ideas of social evolution theory - Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - can illuminate our understanding of the social world.
List of contents
- Jumping into the River. . .
- I. Foundations
- 1: Conceptualizing Social Behaviour
- 2: Hamilton's Rule as an Organizing Framework
- 3: The Rule under Attack: Tautology, Prediction and Causality
- 4: Kin Selection and Group Selection
- 5: Two Conceptions of Social Fitness
- II. Extensions
- 6: Gene Mobility and the Concept of Relatedness
- 7: The Multicellular Organism as a Social Phenomenon
- 8: Cultural Relatedness and Human Social Evolution
- . . .and Climbing Out Again
- Appendix: The Price equation
About the author
Jonathan Birch is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science, specializing in the philosophy of evolutionary biology. His research mainly concerns the evolution of social behaviour, with a particular focus on the work of W. D. Hamilton. He has published widely on various topics in the philosophy of the life sciences, in journals such as The American Naturalist, Biological Reviews, Philosophy of Science and The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Summary
From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. Jonathan Birch explores how the three key explanatory ideas of social evolution theory - Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - can illuminate our understanding of the social world.
Additional text
Jonathan Birch's The Philosophy of Social Evolution is a careful evaluation of Hamiltons ideas and legacy, much of the discussion framed in the context of the individual versus group selection controversy. ... he gives a full and fair analysis of what Hamilton really intended.
