Does Altruism Exist?
Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others
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David Sloan Wilson, one of the world’s leading evolutionists, addresses a question that has puzzled philosophers, psychologists, and evolutionary biologists for centuries: Does altruism exist naturally among the Earth’s creatures?
The key to understanding the existence of altruism, Wilson argues, is by understanding the role it plays in the social organization of groups. Groups that function like organisms indubitably exist, and organisms evolved from groups. Evolutionists largely agree on how functionally organized groups evolve, ending decades of controversy, but the resolution casts altruism in a new light: altruism exists but shouldn’t necessarily occupy center stage in our understanding of social behavior.
After laying a general theoretical foundation, Wilson surveys altruism and group-level functional organization in our own species—in religion, in economics, and in the rest of everyday life. He shows that altruism is not categorically good and can have pathological consequences. Finally, he shows how a social theory that goes beyond altruism by focusing on group function can help to improve the human condition in a practical sense.
Does Altruism Exist? puts old controversies to rest and will become the center of debate for decades to come.
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Wilson (The Neighborhood Project), president of the Evolution Institute, declares that the debate between proponents of kin selection and group selection has been firmly resolved in favor of the latter. Many in the kin selection camp will continue to disagree; still, Wilson's argument is fascinating. Biologist Lynn Margulis posited in the 1960s and 1970s that humans are in part the sum of organisms merging multicellular organisms being "a group of groups of groups, whose members led more fractious lives" eons past. Examining superorganisms of varying levels of complexity, Wilson concludes that altruism within a group trumps selfishness. "Higher-level superorganisms such as nucleated cells, multicellular organisms, and eusocial insect colonies dominate their lower-level competitors," Wilson writes, noting that "when an ant colony moves into a rotten log, most of the solitary invertebrate species... are quickly displaced." He also clarifies that no organisms demonstrate pure altruism, though humans are capable of it. Alone among primates, humans transformed "from groups of organisms to groups as organisms," and represent "a major evolutionary transition." The rub: when altruistic groups beat selfish groups, they get bigger, and thus harder to manage. Still, Wilson thinks there will be "planetary altruists" yet. This is a fascinating, if inconclusive, take on altruism.
