Indeed. I consider the n thousand year march of human progress to primarily consist of our slow increase in the size of the group that we consider human. That we’ve managed expand our circle of who is considered human from our group of 70-100 hunter gatherers to nations with hundreds of millions (and even occasionally flirt with the idea that all homo sapiens are human), is almost unbelievable.
Mankind’s greatest accomplishments are the culture and tools that allow us to hijack our brain’s instincts and build far, far better than nature created.
Fitness may be mistaken for individuality (upthread), when it’s most likely that Darwin was using the term in the social sense. Does it not stand to reason that the organisms and groups of organisms who can marshal more resources than other organisms, collectively, will be the survivors? Do wit and wile, gall and guile stand for anything?
IMNSHO, the paper that sums adaptive strategies the best is this classic from 1979:
The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm:
a critique of the adaptationist programme
BY S. J. GOULD AND R. C. LEWONTIN
It can be summed thusly: there are multiple pathways of adaptation (selection) occurring simultaneously, and to varying degrees, within organisms and collectives of organisms.
Yes, exactly! “Survival of the fittest” suffers from ambiguity. I think a contemporary
English version might be “survival of the most fitting”. Especially now that we also have such concepts as sustainability (some species being too successful and going extinct by eating all their food too quickly).
And yeah, cooperation is the key to success, all the way down to mitochondria cooperating with larger cells, trading energy for the larger cells’ ability to supply fuel. We are made of cooperations, from all the cells cooperating to make our body to the autonomous gut bacteria, and that’s just within one human.
It’s all fine and good to regard theories such as those communicated by Hare and Wood as a rebuke to Social Darwinism. But “human self domestication” has dispiriting implications all the same.
Are we to draw any moral conclusions from papers such as this?
Good scientific theories explain the existing data, and usefully guide future research. This theory may, in fact do so. But choosing a theory for its political or aesthetic implications is fraught with peril.
Very often yes. Bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate production of compounds and protect themselves growing in biofilms. Myxobacteria even attack prey as swarms, overwhelming larger organisms like protozoa and small animals. The idea that nature is all a one-on-one competition is wrong even for them.
Does it, though? Dawkins may be an ass, but his work is relevant here. Does a human even need to procreate to make their mark on the world for generations, when so much of what we do is communication, collaboration, and building? Human society operates much more in thought than in genetic code.
Not so much old as just so tired of explaining the same things again and again and seeing partial understandings of bio attributes abused to try to explain social phenomena.
That seems like a really narrow view of where friendliness would provide a massive evolutionary value. Some other obvious benefits, that extend way further back than homo sapiens, come from from avoiding potentially fatal or just calorically wasteful struggles A willingness to part with a part of the proceeds of a hunt, with another species, can avoid a fight that is a far larger cost than the savings.
Valid criticism can come from outside of the profession or even professionals. See Our Bodies, Ourselves. See criticism of racial theories, see criticism of whether being gay is a mental illness etc, etc, etc.
Didn’t Kropotkin basically demolish this in his time? Hell, I know Gould addressed it too before he passed away. I swear to God folks don’t want to admit that selection pressures don’t follow some form of maschismo.
