The Less Selfish Gene

Why have millions of readers and viewers become magnetized by the hitherto arcane field of plant communication? The article argues that the contemporary appeal of plant communication is rooted in a quest for alternative modes of being to neoliberalism, modes more accommodating of the coexistence of cooperation and competition in human and more-than-human communities. This ascendant understanding of plant communication and forest dynamics offers a counternarrative of flourishing, a model of what George Monbiot has called, in another context, “private sufficiency and public wealth.”

The Evolved Nest, Virtue, and Vice

The evolved nest provides an evolved baseline for optimizing species-normal development. Any shift away from the evolved nest should be considered a risk factor. Humans are dynamic complex systems that self-organize according to experience, and whose initial conditions shape subsequent development and function, barring later intervention. The evolved nest provides the type of stimulation and support at the right times and in the right ways for healthy development. Developmental psychological studies are beginning to examine nest components, demonstrating their effects on social and moral capacities. Neurobiological studies demonstrate the effects of evolved nest components on human functioning and disposition. We can also observe the vast difference in personality and culture between societies that provide the evolved nest and those that do not. Traditional Indigenous communities provide the nest and demonstrate the natural development of virtue. When the nest is not provided it represents a broken continuum of support and we should not be surprised that various psychopathologies result that promote individual vice and vicious societies. Industrialized capitalist societies have fostered people unable to fit into the biocommunity as fellow members and then have rationalized the disordered result with anthropocentric fatalistic theories like selfish-gene theory. The evolved nest is critical for restoring human nature to its earth-centric origins as found among our ancestors for millions of years.

Historical Origins

This chapter traces the origins of the gene’s-eye view through three sections of evolutionary biology. The first is adaptationism, the tradition that takes the appearance of design in living world to be the cardinal problem a theory of evolution needs to explain. The chapter shows how this view has been especially prominent in British biology, owing the strong standing of natural theology and the writings of William Paley. The second is the emergence of population genetics during the modern synthesis. Here, the work of R.A. Fisher was particularly important. The third and final section was the levels selection debate and the rejection of group selection. G.C. Williams led the way the way and the origin of the gene’s-eye view culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene.

The Gene's-Eye View of Evolution

To many evolutionary biologists, the central challenge of their discipline is to explain adaptation, the appearance of design in the living world. With the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin elegantly showed how a purely mechanistic process can achieve this striking feature of nature. Since Darwin, the way many biologists think about evolution and natural selection is as a theory about individual organisms. Over a century later, a subtle but radical shift in perspective emerged with the gene’s-eye view of evolution in which natural selection was conceptualized as a struggle between genes for replication and transmission to the next generation. This viewpoint culminated with the publication of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Oxford University Press, 1976) and is now commonly referred to as selfish gene thinking. The gene’s-eye view has subsequently played a central role in evolutionary biology, although it continues to attract controversy. The central aim of this accessible book is to show how the gene’s-eye view differs from the traditional organismal account of evolution, trace its historical origins, clarify typical misunderstandings and, by using examples from contemporary experimental work, show why so many evolutionary biologists still consider it an indispensable heuristic. The book concludes by discussing how selfish gene thinking fits into ongoing debates in evolutionary biology, and what they tell us about the future of the gene’s-eye view of evolution. The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution is suitable for graduate-level students taking courses in evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary genetics, as well as professional researchers in these fields. It will also appeal to a broader, interdisciplinary audience from the social sciences and humanities including philosophers and historians of science

The birth of kindness

Kin-selection is sheer nonsense, based on the false assumption that the gene for helping is a rare gene, whose chance to be shared can only be provided by kinship. The gene for helping is instead universally shared within and across species with altricial young, invented to foster the survival of offspring. As begging and helping are complementary behaviors, both triggered by oxitocin ( mesotocin for lungfishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds) begging is usually a reliable sign of the possession of the gene for helping. This is why helping is rewarding and allofeeding is widely diffused. Hence we can even see a sea gull feeding a penguin. It is not a mistake: it is the selfish gene for helping that recognizes itself in a gaping beak, not in an arbitrary tag as a green beard (Dawkins). If we have surplus of food and don't have offspring to feed, we too, as a sea gull, strive to bypass obstacles to energy flow, looking for someone else to feed, if not other humans, at least a pet.

Nonlinear sociodynamics of competitive sociotypes of molecular and cosmic human

As one of the most important factors determining the nature of the dynamic behavior of a social system, the article considers the competitive relationship of two alternative sociotypes, conventionally designated as molecular human and cosmic human. The molecular sociotype is understood as the personality of the average consumer, whose behavioral determinants are largely determined by the selfish gene. The cosmic human is a person who has realized the dependence on the selfish gene. Representatives of the cosmic sociotype consider the products of their own mind, their contribution to culture, as a more significant function than gene replication. This explains the different values ​​of the coefficients of reproduction of the total resource of the system by molecular human and cosmic human. Three possible scenarios for the evolution of a social system have been identified for different values ​​of the coefficients of reproduction of the total resource of the system by both sociotypes with a constant share of the population. In this case, the aggregate resource is understood as the entire intellectual, cultural and economic product produced by the social system during a certain conditional cycle of reproduction. The dynamics of a social system with a variable value of the share of a productive comic sociotype is considered in the work on the basis of a nonlinear two-dimensional model. The mathematical model demonstrates complex nonlinear quasicyclic behavior.