Comment
Nature 467, 653-655 (7 October 2010) | doi:10.1038/467653a; Published online 6 October 2010
Altruism researchers must cooperate
Samir Okasha1
Abstract
Biologists studying the evolution of social behaviour are at loggerheads. The disputes — mainly over methods — are holding back the field, says Samir Okasha.
Last month, 30 leading evolutionary biologists met in Amsterdam to discuss a burgeoning controversy. The question of how altruistic behaviour can arise through natural selection, once regarded as settled, is again the subject of heated debate.
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Esta pesquisa vai ser altruisticamente comentada ao longo do tempo, ooops da semana. Darei destaque às preocupações subjetivas de Okasha para salvar o SMS Darwinic das águas das evidências como fator preponderante para a justificação teórica.
Aperitivo do comentário de Okasha:
Rival camps have emerged, each endorsing a different approach to social evolution. Heated exchanges have occurred at conferences, on blogs and in journals, and have even been reported in The New York Times. Biologists have accused each other of misunderstanding, of failing to cite previous studies appropriately, of making unwarranted claims to novelty and of perpetuating confusions. Yet I contend that there is little to argue about.
Much of the current antagonism stems from the fact that different researchers are focusing on different aspects of the same phenomenon, and are using different methods. In allowing a plurality of approaches – a healthy thing in science –to descend into tribalism, biologists risk causing serious damage to the field of social evolution, and potentially to evolutionary biology in general.
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COMENTÁRIO:
Galera, parece que quebrou pau entre os 30 de Amsterdam. Mas que falta de altruísmo epistemológico...
Preocupações altruístas [$$$ e alguns críticos inimigos oportunistas] de Okasha:
Researchers should take stock before another overblown dispute does serious damage to the field. Up-and-coming researchers are unlikely to be attracted to a discipline plagued by controversy. Moreover, if the experts cannot agree about what theoretical framework works best, the supply of research funding may eventually be threatened. Also worrying is the possibility that onlookers perceive the central question of social evolution theory – how altruism can evolve – as unresolved, even though it was answered decades ago. During the ‘sociobiology wars’ of the 1970s and 1980s, creationists proved adept at seizing on and exaggerating the differences in opinion between biologists for their own ends. It would be a disaster if the same were to happen again.
Researchers should take stock before another overblown dispute does serious damage to the field. Up-and-coming researchers are unlikely to be attracted to a discipline plagued by controversy. Moreover, if the experts cannot agree about what theoretical framework works best, the supply of research funding may eventually be threatened. Also worrying is the possibility that onlookers perceive the central question of social evolution theory – how altruism can evolve – as unresolved, even though it was answered decades ago. During the ‘sociobiology wars’ of the 1970s and 1980s, creationists proved adept at seizing on and exaggerating the differences in opinion between biologists for their own ends. It would be a disaster if the same were to happen again.
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Depois eu volto...antes que a casa de Down caia pelas próprias mãos dos atuais discípulos de Darwin...
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ESQUINA DA LITERATURA
GEORGE PRICE AND THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF KINDNESS
Oren Harman (Author, Bar Ilan University)
The moving tale of one man's quest to crack the mystery of altruism, an evolutionary enigma that has haunted scientists since Darwin.
Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest?
Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be.
Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922–1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle. An original and penetrating picture of twentieth century thought, it is also a deeply personal journey. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired equation that explains altruism to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin’s enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter’s flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence.
BOOK DETAILS
Hardcover
June 2010
ISBN 978-0-393-06778-1
6.4 × 9.6 in / 464 pages
Territory Rights: Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
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ESQUINA DA LITERATURA
The Price of Altruism
GEORGE PRICE AND THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF KINDNESS
Oren Harman (Author, Bar Ilan University)
The moving tale of one man's quest to crack the mystery of altruism, an evolutionary enigma that has haunted scientists since Darwin.
Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest?
Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be.
Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922–1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle. An original and penetrating picture of twentieth century thought, it is also a deeply personal journey. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired equation that explains altruism to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin’s enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter’s flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence.
BOOK DETAILS
Hardcover
June 2010
ISBN 978-0-393-06778-1
6.4 × 9.6 in / 464 pages
Territory Rights: Worldwide including Canada, but excluding the British Commonwealth.
Source/Fonte: W. W. Norton
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Review/Resenha
The Price of Altruism
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Review/Resenha
The Price of Altruism
By OREN HARMAN
Reviewed by Alan Grafen
George Price was a remarkable man who came to judge his own life a failure, and had many reasons to do so. The legacy that may or may not buoy up that judgment consists of a handful of obscure mathematical papers that purport to make contributions to evolutionary biology. Price himself doubted their value, and biologists still use his work, but there remains an ambivalence about its meaning and significance. In The Price of Altruism, Oren Harman tells the story of evolutionary debates over altruism versus selfishness from The Origin of Species to the present day, and interweaves it with biographical material. Both strands are rich and complex, and their interplay creates a stirring book that will reward many readers with an intelligent interest in altruism.
George Price was an enigmatic figure in life, and remains so 25 years after his suicide in London. An American, he was involved in the Manhattan Project and worked for IBM, and more than once he claimed to have invented or, better, to be on track to invent, a grand new machine. One example was his "Design Machine," in which one could specify any three-dimensional shape, and it would produce an object with that shape. It would have been very useful for manufacturing parts, and such a device may or may not exist today, but in 1956 it was far beyond the realm of the feasible. George publicised his "invention," and appeared heroically in November of that year in Fortune magazine. He also contacted many famous figures, not hesitating to use his considerable intellectual and rhetorical skills to interest Hubert Humphrey in his ideas about winning the Cold War, and to walk into B. F. Skinner's lab and discuss "Teaching Machines" with him. Thus he started on his life as an uncertain mixture of visionary and charlatan-showman, of profound thinker and intellectual gadfly and self-publicist, which Harman documents very engagingly.
George Price was a remarkable man who came to judge his own life a failure, and had many reasons to do so. The legacy that may or may not buoy up that judgment consists of a handful of obscure mathematical papers that purport to make contributions to evolutionary biology. Price himself doubted their value, and biologists still use his work, but there remains an ambivalence about its meaning and significance. In The Price of Altruism, Oren Harman tells the story of evolutionary debates over altruism versus selfishness from The Origin of Species to the present day, and interweaves it with biographical material. Both strands are rich and complex, and their interplay creates a stirring book that will reward many readers with an intelligent interest in altruism.
George Price was an enigmatic figure in life, and remains so 25 years after his suicide in London. An American, he was involved in the Manhattan Project and worked for IBM, and more than once he claimed to have invented or, better, to be on track to invent, a grand new machine. One example was his "Design Machine," in which one could specify any three-dimensional shape, and it would produce an object with that shape. It would have been very useful for manufacturing parts, and such a device may or may not exist today, but in 1956 it was far beyond the realm of the feasible. George publicised his "invention," and appeared heroically in November of that year in Fortune magazine. He also contacted many famous figures, not hesitating to use his considerable intellectual and rhetorical skills to interest Hubert Humphrey in his ideas about winning the Cold War, and to walk into B. F. Skinner's lab and discuss "Teaching Machines" with him. Thus he started on his life as an uncertain mixture of visionary and charlatan-showman, of profound thinker and intellectual gadfly and self-publicist, which Harman documents very engagingly.
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