Edward O. Wilson: The Social Conquest of Earth (2013, Liveright Publishing Corporation, Liveright)
paperback, 352 pages
Published April 15, 2013 by Liveright Publishing Corporation, Liveright.
Scattered, and full of basic evolutionary beginnings of the planet and life.
Scattered, and full of basic evolutionary beginnings of the planet and life.
While he wants to answer questions like «Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going?» he sidesteps this goal often and uses the book to heavily promote his newly found belief that eusociality does evolve through group/multilevel selection instead of kin selection/inclusive fitness. The Nature publication of Nowak et al. was heavily criticized when it was published (you can find some of the replies to the original paper above the linked study).
He uses his beloved ants to argue for his view of group selection by pointing out that ant colonies maybe shouldn't even be viewed as superorganisms of multiple individuals but that all the worker- and soldier-ants are merely an extended phenotype of their queen, robots without much of an own interest (how ironic, given that he also argues against robots & AI in the book). Reviewers have pointed out that this description of …
While he wants to answer questions like «Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going?» he sidesteps this goal often and uses the book to heavily promote his newly found belief that eusociality does evolve through group/multilevel selection instead of kin selection/inclusive fitness. The Nature publication of Nowak et al. was heavily criticized when it was published (you can find some of the replies to the original paper above the linked study).
He uses his beloved ants to argue for his view of group selection by pointing out that ant colonies maybe shouldn't even be viewed as superorganisms of multiple individuals but that all the worker- and soldier-ants are merely an extended phenotype of their queen, robots without much of an own interest (how ironic, given that he also argues against robots & AI in the book). Reviewers have pointed out that this description of the non-queen ants probably isn't true and that Wilson cherry-picked his citations to make it fit his view (e.g. it is known that worker/soldier ants can start a rebellion against their queen).
But even if we consider the extended phenotype-hypothesis it becomes clear that this view eliminates the problem of eusocial behavior all together: If there is no social superorganism we neither need inclusive fitness nor group selection to explain the allegedly altruistic behavior because there is no eusociality at all. So I don't feel convinced that his "alternative" is much of an improvement.
Given his cherry-picking of facts I'm also not sure how well good his descriptions of early humans really are. Often it feels like those just-so stories which can often be found in Evolutionary Psychology, but maybe an anthropologist could help me out on this… Oh, and did I mention that Wilson doesn't also opposes robots, but also manned space travel?
So: If you want to learn more about ants I'd recommend to read Wilson's/Hölldobler's The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct. And if you're more interested in the evolution of human nature you might read The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, which feels much better researched.
