The Origin Of The Social Impulse - University Of Houston

The Origin of the Social Impulse:E.O. Wilson’s Recent and ControversialRejection of Kin Selection in Historical ContextAbraham H. GibsonDepartment of HistoryVirginia Tech

Outline 1. Wilson’s intellectual pedigree 2. Wilson’s early career 3. Kin selection controversy

Charles Darwin British naturalist On the Origin of Species(1859) Considered social insects“by far the most seriousspecial difficulty” for histheory

Charles Darwin “This difficulty, thoughappearing insuperable, islessened, or, as I believe,disappears, when it isremembered that selectionmay be applied to thefamily, as well as to theindividual, and may thusgain the desired end”

Charles Darwin “As long as it had beenprofitable to thecommunity that a numbershould have been annuallyborn capable of work, butincapable of procreation, Ican see no very greatdifficulty in this beingeffected by naturalselection’’

Herbert Spencer British philosopher Social Darwinism Inheritance of acquiredcharacteristics

Herbert Spencer “The Social Organism” (1860)– Societies grow larger– They grow more complex– Division of labor

Herbert Spencer “There exist various groupsof super-organicphenomena including allthose processes andproducts which imply thecoordinated actions ofmany individuals –coordinated actions whichachieve results exceeding inextent and complexitythose achievable byindividual actions.”

Charles Otis Whitman American zoologist Marine Biological Laboratory Journal of Morphology

Charles Otis Whitman “On the same grounds thatthe sociologist affirms that asociety is an organism, thebiologists declares that anorganism is a society.”

Charles Otis Whitman “Comparative embryologyreminds us at every turn thatthe organism dominates cellformation, using for the samepurpose one, several, ormany cells, massing itsmaterial and directing itsmovements, and shaping itsorgans, as if cells did notexist, or as if they existed onlyin complete subordination toits will”

William Morton Wheeler Harvard biologist Ant expert

William Morton Wheeler “Ant Colony as Organism”– Acts as unitary whole– Reproductively differentiated– Ontogeny and phylogeny “the colony is a true organismand not merely the analogueof the person”

William Morton Wheeler Emergence: “a novelty ofbehavior arising from thespecific interaction ororganization of a number ofelements, whether inorganic,organic, or mental, whichthereby constitute a whole, asdistinguished from theirmere sum, or ‘resultant.’”

William Morton Wheeler“These sections are calledlevels. The word is not veryapt since it conveys a specialand static metaphor, whereasemergents must be regardedas intensively manifoldspaciotemporal events.”

William Morton Wheeler“We are still confronted withthe formidable question as towhat regulates theanticipatory cooperation, orsynergy of the colonialpersonnel and determines itsunitary and individualizedcourse.”

Edward O. Wilson16-year-old Wilson purchasesa copy of William MortonWheeler’s Ants in 1945

Reductionist “triumph” The synthesis (1936-1947)Watson and Crick (1953)Hamilton (1964)Maynard Smith (1964)George C. Williams (1966)

Reductionist “triumph” The synthesis (1936-1947)Watson and Crick (1953)Hamilton (1964)Maynard Smith (1964)George C. Williams (1966)

Sociobiology Published in 1975 Attempted tosynthesize all socialbehavior among allliving things

Sociobiology “The organism doesnot live for itself. Theorganism is onlyDNA’s way of makingmore DNA.”

Sociobiology “How can altruism, which bydefinition reduces personalfitness, possibly evolve bynatural selection? Theanswer is kinship; if thegenes causing the altruismare shared by two organismsbecause of common descent,and if the altruistic act byone organism increases thejoint contribution of thesegenes to the next generation,the propensity to altruismwill spread throughout thegene pool’’

Sociobiology

Post-Cold WarResurgence of Emergence Leo Buss (1987)Eliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson (1989)Thomas Seeley (1989)Moritz and Southwick (1992)

Wilson and Hölldobler “The colony is theequivalent of theorganism, the unitthat must beexamined in order tounderstand thebiology of the colonialspecies.”

Wilson and Hölldobler “Kin selection in antscan now be consideredfundamental tosociobiology.”

Rejecting Kin Selection

Rejecting Kin Selection “Relatedness does notdrive the evolution ofeusociality. “Natural selectiontargets the emergenttraits created by theinteractions of colonymembers.”

Social Conquest of Earth “ science journalistRichard Dawkins ”

Social Conquest of Earth “It can be shown thatnatural selection is usuallymultilevel at least to somedegree: its consequences atthe level of the primarytarget trait reverberate upand down to other levels ofbiological organization,from molecule topopulation.” “Multilevel selection isgroup and individualselection combined.”

Social Conquest of Earth “It can be shown that natural selection is usually multilevel at least to some degree: its consequences at the level of the primary target trait reverberate up and down to other levels of biological organization, from molecule to population.” “Multilevel selection is group and individual selection combined.”