About this item
In a world supposedly governed by ruthless survival of the fittest, why do we see acts of goodness in both animals and humans? This problem plagued Charles Darwin in the 1850s as he developed his theory of evolution through natural selection. Indeed, Darwin worried that the goodness he observed in nature could be the Achilles heel of his theory. Ever since then, scientists and other thinkers have engaged in a fierce debate about the origins of goodness that has dragged politics, philosophy, and religion into what remains a major question for evolutionary biology. The Altruism Equation traces the history of this debate from Darwin to the present through an extraordinary cast of characters-from the Russian prince Petr Kropotkin, who wanted to base society on altruism, to the brilliant biologist George Price, who fell into poverty and succumbed to suicide as he obsessed over the problem.
About the Author
Lee Dugatkin, Ph.D., is a scientist, historian of science, and science writer. The New York Times Book Review calls his most recent work "How To Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog) ," a "Sparkling new book...Part science, part Russian fairy tale and part spy thriller... It may serve - particularly now - as a parable of the lessons that emerge from unfettered science, if we have the courage to let it unfold."
