文档介绍：Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology
David Sloan Wilson1* and Edward O. Wilson2
1Departments of Biology and Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New
York, 13903
2Museum parative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge,
MA 02138
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ******@
Quarterly Review of Biology, in press
D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson 2
Abstract
Current sociobiology is in theoretical disarray, with a diversity of frameworks that
are poorly related to each other. Part of the problem is a reluctance to revisit the
pivotal events that took place during the 1960s, including the rejection of group
selection and the development of alternative theoretical frameworks to explain the
evolution of cooperative and altruistic behaviors. In this article we take a “back to
basics” approach, explaining what group selection is, why its rejection was regarded
as so important, and how it has been revived based on a more careful formulation
and subsequent research. Multilevel selection theory (including group selection)
provides an elegant theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future, once its
turbulent past is appropriately understood.
Key words: Altruism, cooperation, eusociality, group selection, human evolution,
inclusive fitness theory, kin selection, major transitions, multilevel selection,
pluralism, sociobiology
D. S. Wilson and E. O. Wilson 3
Darwin perceived a fundamental problem of social life and its potential solution
in the following famous passage from Descent of Man (1871, p. 166):
It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but
a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the
other men of the same tribe,…an increase in the number of well-endowed
men and advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an
immense advantage to one tribe over another.
The problem is that for a soci