Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think about Our Lives [Paperback]

"The most extraordinary fact about public awareness of evolution is not that 50 percent don't believe the theory but that nearly 100 percent haven't connected it to anything of importance in their lives." (p. 315)

This is a bit curious, but when you consider that Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology was published only 34 years ago, and further that evolutionary psychology has only recently made its way into the curriculum of our university psychology departments, it is understandable. For my part, like David Sloan Wilson (son of Sloan Wilson who wrote a couple of fiction bestsellers in the 1950s, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and A Summer Place), I took to the application of evolutionary ideas to my life the way a duck takes to water. But the overall public awareness and acceptance has lagged, in part due, as Wilson explains, to the failure of the larger academic community to incorporate evolutionary ideas and findings into their fields of study.

That is changing fast with evolutionary medicine, evolutionary psychology and other scientific approaches now established fields of study. What David Wilson hopes follows is an awareness of evolutionary ideas and principles in the social sciences and the humanities, which is one of the reasons he wrote this book which grew out a class he taught to undergraduates.

The essence of evolutionary thought as applied to our daily lives is to ask the question, how does such and such a behavior or such and such an idea relate to the way evolution works? For example, not so long ago we were urged to drink lots of water every day (probably from studies funded by bottled water companies!). But if you think about the human experience in the Pleistocene in what is called the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA) you might ask yourself, how was it possible for humans to drink so much water? Clearly humans would develop an ability to function very well, even optimally, without having to drink so much water, which in those days and climes would have been difficult to do safely. Consequently, doing this "thought experiment" I began to doubt the necessity to drink so much water. And lo and behold it came down from newer studies that actually humans don't really need to drink so much water! David Sloan Wilson gives a number of other examples of evolutionary thinking that has helped us to better understand ourselves and our place in the world and our communities. He is very strong on the idea of cooperation as an adaptive force in evolution, especially human evolution.

One of the ideas that most impressed me is his recognition of the arms struggle between society and the "selfish" individual. Some old-line evolutionists are loath to accept altruism and other seemingly selfless behaviors that benefit the tribe or larger groups as adaptive (other than through kinship) since the genes that code for such behavior would be easily overrun by genes from individuals looking out only for themselves. But what I think is overlooked is the human ability to spot these cheaters and keep them in check or to kick them out of the tribe or worse. Wilson makes the very interesting point that gossip is part of this process. Through gossip a society "maintains a dossier of information on every member and quickly detects social failings." (p. 160). Sociopaths don't fare well in communities in which everybody knows everybody else. But of course gossip doesn't work well, and a sociopath can flourish, where almost everyone is a stranger to one another, which is usually the case in our big cities. This lack of communal checks explains in large part why there is so much crime in our cities.

Another interesting and fundamental idea is what Wilson calls "dancing with ghosts." The idea is that the adaptations we made during the EEA in some cases no longer apply effectively to the current environment. Thus the very nice ability to efficiently put on fat when large amounts of sugar, carbs and fats are temporarily available worked well in the prehistory when the dearth of winter or the dry season was to come; but in today's world of supermarkets and a MacDonald's on every corner, this ability has become a detriment leading to obesity and chronic disease. Many people in the West are dancing with the ghosts of "eat your fill when it's available." This predictive adaptive response (PAR) is no longer adaptive. Wilson gives some other examples relating to pronghorn antelopes that still "flee with amazing speed and endurance from predators that no longer populate the American plains" and baby sea turtles that mistake the lights of the city for the moon shining off the ocean and crawl in the wrong direction. (pp. 52-53)

Wilson also argues convincingly for the idea that life in the ghetto is more dangerous than say life in the suburbs because young people in the ghetto must take greater chances in order to be gain status and wealth. For a person like David Sloan Wilson to risk his life for some status gain would be foolish since he is going to gain enough wealth and status to be successful because of his many social and economic advantages. For a guy in the ghetto, it is sometimes worth the risk (or so it seems) to fight another at the drop of an insult because of the gain in status that can lead to better mating opportunities and a greater command of turf. When the environment is "unstable" and "life expectancy" is "low," a good strategy is to "take care of immediate needs and reproduce early." When you have a "stable environment and high life expectancy" on the other hand, you should "plan for the long term, including delayed reproduction."

There is also a lot in this book about religion from an evolutionary point of view, which I don't have space to go into, some of it based on Wilson's earlier book Darwin's Cathedral (2002).

Evolution for Everyone is excellent. The content is excellent and the writing style is excellent and the book is a joy to read.

One has to give David Sloan Wilson full marks for perserverence. He has spent a good part of his career in a struggle to bolster an untenable idea. Evolution, he says, works on "groups". Not on "species" as once was thought, or down a lineage of individuals as Charles Darwin long ago contended, but on something in between. Having failed to convince the scientific community, in this most recent of his books he turns to a new ally, the general public. In this work, he wants people, in particular his fellow countrymen, to understand that anything to do with life has evolutionary roots. While that's an admirable quest, and offered in a style more scientists should emulate, his reason for that ambition remains fixed on his long-standing crusade.

Wilson starts humbly with a study of a simple creature - the burying beetle. He uses the beetle's reproductive habits to demonstrate the vagaries of nature's selection process. The beetle is a form of scavenger - hunting small mammal corpses which it returns to its burrow. Instead of laying eggs on the remains, however, the female - who remains in residence, unlike most insects - deposits them on the burrow walls. As they hatch, the parents assess the amount of food available and do a head count of the hatchlings. If there are more young than food to sustain them, the parents simply pare down the population. Wilson's purpose in relating this bizarre behaviour is to demonstrate that anyone can find how Darwin's idea works in their own back yard. It's not necessary to be a specialist nor even have a university degree to study the evolutionary process. Just be prepared to be observant and perhaps get your knees soiled.

As a scientist of wide interests, Wilson bemoans the lack of knowledge of evolution in the US population. Not only do more than half its number dismiss the idea, nearly all of them fail to integrate its tenets in their everyday lives. Even the "educated" fail to meet his standard. A prime example is the medical profession whose members treat "morning sickness" in ways that wholly ignore the evolutionary roots and processes of the human immune system. The result, he argues, leads to enigmatic problems among newborns, including undersized or easily infected babies. The immune system in the embryo was impaired by anti-nausea drugs. While unpleasant for the gravid mother, pregnancy sickness is a sign of the foetus' developing fully functioning immunity mechanisms.

Jumping from beetles to humans is the author's method for bringing in his theme of group selection. Although he rather blithely arranges many facets of life, from gene assemblages through "superorganisms" like ants and bees, his real goal becomes clear when he gets to humans. Cultures, he argues, are clear symbols of how group selection works. The binding force of cultures, he contends, is religion. Any religion. To reinforce this concept, he relates the research leading to his earlier work, "Darwin's Cathedral" [posted on by this reviewer 2 December 2002]. Fostered by a grant from the Templeton Foundation, which supports research in "religion and science", Wilson and a colleague engaged in a project studying "forgiveness" among students and reports on studies of hunter-gatherer tribes. Later, he took up "altruism" with a similar aim. For Wilson, evolution works on "in-group" selection rather than "between-group" selection. The latter, of course, smacks of the criticism laid on Darwin's thesis which was portrayed as "nature red in tooth and claw". "Group selection" on such a basis is hardly biology, and wholly ignores the commitment usually made by members of the "in group". Part of their cohesion rests on who remains outside.

Wilson wants to elevate humans, with their supportive capacity, above such brutal appellations. Humans, using their reasoning power, can learn how evolution works. From that understanding, he argues that we can guide our own future in a more secure manner. He denies the charge that humans are fated by our genes to engage in violent conflict [although after years of searching, i've yet to learn who made that accusation], and contends that natural senses of empathy, cooperation and generosity can be harnessed to outpace competition and narrow views of human society. The aim is well-stated and entirely within the bounds of reason. It's unfortunate that much of his target audience is unlikely to comprehend his message or will simply dismiss it as based on a "false idea" - that of natural selection. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]