Wilson revisits group selection

Abstract

There are three kinds of ‘great idea’ books. There are books that proclaim themselves revolutionary; for example, A New Kind of Science (Wolfram 2002) but typically turn out to be old ideas proclaimed to be brand new. There are books that make no claim to their own importance, but are nonetheless game changing; for example, Evolution and the Theory of Games (Maynard Smith 1982). Finally, there are books that present conjecture as fact and try to persuade readers that consensus exists when in fact consensus does not exist. This third category is the one that E.O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth falls into. Wilson purports to provide an overview of several of the most important events in the history of life on Earth but instead performs an ingenious sleight of hand by presenting the field of social biology as having recently been revolutionized by himself and a small number of colleagues. The book is admirably written, but misleading in that Wilson presents recent work challenging the hypothesis of kin selection as both irrefutable and widely accepted by social biologists. In particular, Wilson claims that biologists have realized kin selection is incorrect as an explanation for the evolution of sterile helper castes in social insects. In other words, Wilson is preaching consensus that does not yet exist. First, the good news. What I found compelling about the book was Wilson’s argument that life-long social living is the innovation that eventually allowed humans to flourish. As he notes, humans and social insects have a lot in common and both are found virtually everywhere on Earth, living in and dominating diverse terrestrial ecosystems. Having argued myself that humans are a eusocial species (also see Foster and Ratnieks 2005, Hardisty and Cassill 2010), I agree with Wilson’s claim that our