EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND HUMAN ALTRUISM: A REVIEW OF THREE BOOKS

In Unto Others,2 Elliott Sober, a noted philosopher of evolutionary biology, and David Sloan Wilson, a lifelong student of group selection, argue from evolutionary theory, philosophy, and psychology that, despite today’s nearly exclusive preoccupation with self-interest, ultimately altruistic motives also influence human action. In The Origins of Virtue,3 originally published in 1996 and recently republished by Penguin, the science writer Matt Ridley likewise argues that natural selection favors trust and virtue in some human relationships. In sum, both books argue that prehistoric humans depended on fellow tribe members for survival in warfare with other tribes, and that pure egoism is utterly inconsistent with the fellowship and trust required for this interdependence. The challenges these books pose to the economists’ (and many evolutionists’) view that humans are egoistic animals whose only motive is self-interest are important and timely. Are their arguments sufficient to dethrone Madison Avenue’s dogma? Some doubt whether any argument from evolution could do so. In The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics,4 recently republished in paperback, Paul Lawrence Farber, a historian of science, reviews the history of attempts to apply evolutionary biology to ethics. He finds that, so far, this history is one of failure without end. Ventures in evolutionary ethics fall into two general classes. The first seeks to demonstrate that ‘‘those mental and moral qualities most peculiar to mankind (are) analogous, in their nature, to the mental and moral qualities of animals’’ (Fisher 1958, p. 189), thus bringing the evolution of morality within the purview of natural selection. Thus Darwin (1871, p. 166) argued that, for most of human prehistory, selection among groups of human beings favored altruism among the members of a group: