From: Lloyd Davidson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 14:29:59 -0700

International Herald Tribune

Book Review: Evolution For Everyone
By Natalie Angier
Published: April 6, 2007

Evolution For Everyone How Darwin's Theory Can 
Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. By David 
Sloan Wilson. 390 pages. $24. Delacorte Press.

Just as in the classic clashes of nature, where 
every mutational upgrade in a carnivore's 
strength or cunning is soon countered by a 
speedier or more paranoid model of antelope, so 
the pitched struggle between evolutionary theory 
and its deniers has yielded a bristling diversity 
of ploys and counterploys. The heavyhanded 
biblical literalism of creationist science 
evolves into the feints and curlicues of 
intelligent design, and the casual dismissiveness 
with which scientists long regarded the 
anti-evolutionists gives way to a belated 
awareness that, gee, the public doesn't seem to 
realize how fatuous the other side is, and maybe 
it's time to combat the creationist phylum head 
on. And so, over the last few years, scientists 
have unleashed a blitzkrieg of books in defense 
of Darwinism, summarizing the Everest of 
supportive evidence for evolutionary theory, 
filleting the arguments of the naysayers or 
reciting, yet again, the story of Charles Darwin, 
depressive naturalist extraordinaire, whose 
increasingly pervasive avuncular profile has 
lofted him to logo status on par with Einstein 
and the Nike swoosh.

David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at 
Binghamton University, takes a different and 
decidedly refreshing approach. Rather than 
catalogue its successes, denounce its detractors 
or in any way present evolutionary theory as the 
province of expert tacticians like himself, 
Wilson invites readers inside and shows them how 
Darwinism is done, and at lesson's end urges us 
to go ahead, feel free to try it at home. The 
result is a sprightly, absorbing and charmingly 
earnest book that manages a minor miracle, the 
near-complete emulsifying of science and the 
"real world," ingredients too often kept 
stubbornly, senselessly apart. Only when Wilson 
seeks to add religion to the mix, and to show 
what natural, happy symbionts evolutionary 
biology and religious faith can be, does he begin 
to sound like a corporate motivational speaker or 
a political candidate glad-handing the crowd.

In Wilson's view, Darwin's theory of evolution by 
natural selection has the beauty of being both 
simple and profound. Unlike quantum mechanics or 
the general theory of relativity, the basic 
concepts behind evolutionary theory are easy to 
grasp; and once grasped, he argues, they can be 
broadly applied to better understand ourselves 
and the world - the world both as it is and as it 
might be, with the right bit of well-informed 
coaxing. Wilson has long been interested in the 
evolution of co-operative and altruistic 
behavior, and much of the book is devoted to the 
premise that "goodness can evolve, at least when 
the appropriate conditions are met." As he sees 
it, all of life is characterized by a "cosmic" 
struggle between good and evil, the high-strung 
terms we apply to behaviors that are either 
cooperative or selfish, civic or anomic. The 
constant give-and-take between me versus we 
extends down to the tiniest and most primal 
elements of life. Short biochemical sequences may 
want to replicate themselves ad infinitum, their 
neighboring sequences be damned; yet genes get 
together under the aegis of cells and reproduce 
in orderly fashion as genomes, as collectives of 
sequences, setting aside some of their immediate 
selfish urges for the sake of long-term genomic 
survival. Cells further collude as organs, and 
organs pool their talents and become bodies.

The conflict between being well behaved, being 
good, not gulping down more than your share, and 
being selfish enough to get your fair share, "is 
eternal and encompasses virtually all species on 
earth," he writes, and it likely occurs on any 
other planet that supports life, too, "because it 
is predicted at such a fundamental level by 
evolutionary theory." How do higher patterns of 
cooperative behavior emerge from aggregates of 
small, selfish units? With carrots, sticks and 
ceaseless surveillance. In the human body, for 
example, nascent tumor cells arise on a 
shockingly regular basis, each determined to 
replicate without bound; again and again, immune 
cells attack the malignancies, destroying the 
outlaw cells and themselves in the process. The 
larger body survives to breed, and hence spawn a 
legacy far sturdier than any tumor mass could 
manage.

As with our bodies, so with our behaviors. Wilson 
explores the many fascinating ways in which 
humans are the consummate group-thinking, 
team-playing animal. The way we point things out 
to one another, for example, is unique among 
primates. "Apes raised with people learn to point 
for things that they want but never point to call 
the attention of their human caretakers to 
objects of mutual interest," Wilson writes, 
"something that human infants start doing around 
their first birthday." The eyes of other apes are 
dark across their entire span and thus are hard 
to follow, but the contrast between the white 
sclera and colored iris of the human eye makes it 
difficult for people to conceal the direction in 
which they are looking. In the interdependent, 
egalitarian context of the tribe, the ancestral 
human setting, Wilson says, "it becomes 
advantageous for members of the team to share 
information, turning the eyes into organs of 
communication in addition to organs of vision." 
Humans are equipped with all the dispositional 
tools needed to establish and maintain order in 
the commons. Studies have revealed a deep 
capacity for empathy, a willingness to trust 
others and become instant best friends; and an 
equally strong urge to punish cheaters, to exact 
revenge against those who buck group rules for 
private gain.

Of course, even as humans bond together in groups 
and behave with impressive civility toward their 
neighbors, they are capable of treating those 
outside the group with ruthless savagery. Wilson 
is not naïve, and he recognizes the ease with 
which humans fall into an us-versus-them 
mind-set. Yet he is a self-described optimist, 
and he believes that the golden circles of 
we-ness, the conditions that encourage entities 
at every stratum of life to stop competing and 
instead pool their labors into a communally 
acting mega-entity, can be expanded outward like 
ripples on a pond until they encompass all of us 
- that the entire human race can evolve the 
culturally primed if not genetically settled 
incentive to see our futures for what they are, 
inexorably linked on the lone blue planet we 
share.

Toward the end of the book he offers a series of 
evolutionarily informed suggestions on how we 
might help widen the geometry of good will, 
beginning with the italicized, boldface 
pronouncement that "we are not fated by our genes 
to engage in violent conflict." Our bloody past 
does not foretell an inevitably bloody future, 
and violent behaviors that make grim sense in one 
context can become maladaptive in another. "The 
Vikings of Iceland were among the fiercest people 
on earth, and now they are the most peaceful," he 
observes. "In principle, it is possible to 
completely eliminate violent conflict by 
eliminating its preferred 'habitat.'" For their 
universal appeal and basal power to harmonize a 
crowd, he recommends more music and dancing and 
asks, "Could we establish world peace if everyone 
at the United Nations showed up in leotards?" He 
also believes that the world's religions should 
be tapped for their "wisdom." This is a fine idea 
in the abstract, but given current events and the 
fissuring of the world along so many 
theo-sectarian lines, I wish we could forgo the 
sermon and just strike up the band.

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-- 
Lloyd Davidson, Ph.D.
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