Group Selection, Pluralism, and the Evolution of Altruism

Abstract

multi-level view of natural selection, in which group can play a significant role, and argue that group was involved in the evolution of altruistic behavior in humans. The book is entirely persuasive in its argument that attempts to marginalize group-selectionist ideas in the latter part of the 20th century were mistaken. Sober and Wilson also apply their multilevel evolutionary framework to the question of whether the psychological mechanisms underlying human behavior are wholly egoistic or in part genuinely altruistic. In this review we focus on Sober and Wilson's treatment of the units of selection question, and the relation between this issue and the evolution of altruism. So we leave untouched their applications of group