Evolutionary biology is intrinsically historical. Evolutionary theorists tend to be much more interested in both historical and conceptual/philosophical issues than their counterparts in most other disciplines. Invoking the authority of ‘‘patron saint’’ Darwin is part of their standard repertoire. Historians and philosophers, including ethical theorists, have major stakes in the ‘‘Darwin industry’’— although, somewhat disturbingly, most biomedical and environmental ethicists go about their business without much concern for recent advances in the philosophy of biology. Discussing ethics in The Descent of Man, Darwin (1871) referred to the writings of moral philosophers including Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill. In this issue, John Mizzoni argues that Darwin’s views did not lead him to an unfamiliar and eccentric view about the nature and content of ethics, but fitted rather well with the most representative (past and contemporary) normative ethical theories: virtue ethics, natural law ethics, social contract ethics, utilitarian ethics, deontological ethics, and care ethics. Robin Owen’s historical essay on Ronald Fisher and social insects deals with an issue that Darwin had avoided discussing in detail: the evolution of (‘‘harmonious’’) social insect colonies (in contrast to human societies that exhibit intra-communal conflict). In The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Fisher (1930) developed a verbal model of the evolution of eusociality by connecting selection acting on fecundity with the sterility of workers. Owen shows that Fisher’s development of the model was strongly influenced by Major Leonard Darwin, one of Charles Darwin’s sons, and argues that the Fisher-Darwin model ‘‘presages almost exactly’’ the independently derived mathematical model recently proposed by Martin Nowak, E. O. Wilson, and others. Still on the subject of eusociality, Klaus Stiefel proposes that a dishonest signaling system can be evolutionarily stable in eusocial animal societies if the amount of dishonesty is balanced by the chance of nonreproductive workers to advance to the reproductive caste in the future. He expresses this trade-off in a modified form of Hamilton’s rule, distinguishing between the real and the perceived cost of an altruistic act, and between the real and the perceived genetic relatedness between colony members. He also argues that the vertebrate neuromodulator oxytocin (likely integrated with a number of other functions related to social bonding) could serve as an internal representation of the perceived cost of an altruistic act and of perceived relatedness, and concludes with a discussion of honesty in signaling and a comparison between vertebrate and insect eusociality. Two other articles deal with different aspects of collaboration. Frans Roes discusses female inheritance and the ‘‘male retention hypothesis.’’ Permanent groups (groups with no inherent limit on group longevity) exist in several species because over generations members share important interests. Given the association between cooperation and degree of relatedness (Hamilton), he suggests that a collective interest is more likely to be achieved when members show a higher degree of relatedness. He then argues that if membership is inherited by only one sex, and this is the female sex, this results in a higher degree of relatedness between group members than when membership is inherited by both sexes, or by males only (as indeed found in the overwhelming majority of insects, fish, birds, and mammals living in permanent groups). Regarding humans, Roes also ponders whether moralizing Gods raise paternity confidence, without reaching firm conclusions in W. Callebaut (&) KLI Institute, Klosterneuburg, Austria e-mail: werner.callebaut@kli.ac.at
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