Proof that Policies Informed by Evolution can Succeed where Other Perspectives have Failed

Category: Evolution Institute

Evolution, the theory that has already proven itself for understanding the rest of life, is equally relevant for understanding the human condition. With understanding comes the capacity for improvement. Thus, evolutionary theory can be used to improve the quality of human life in a practical sense.

I have dedicated the last five years of my life to demonstrating this claim, by getting involved in my city of Binghamton and by co-founding the Evolution Institute, the first think tank to formulate public policy from an evolutionary perspective. I also chose to write about my adventures in The Neighborhood Project as they were unfolding, rather than waiting for some kind of final proof. After all, there was an entire paradigm to convey, I was trying to apply evolution to many policy issues at once, and years might be required for any single project to reach fruition. As a result, reviews of The Neighborhood Project almost invariably wish me well, but note with varying degrees of optimism and pessimism that the proof is not yet in.

It is therefore with considerable pride that I can offer proof for one project; a program for at-risk high school students called the Regents Academy that the Binghamton City School District started in 2010 and invited me to help design. My consulting relationship with the School District began in 2006 and has led to several academic publications, but this was my first opportunity to help build a program from the ground up, using my evolutionary toolkit.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 12:00 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Support EVOLUTION:THIS VIEW OF LIFE on Kickstarter

Category: Evolution Institute

EVOLUTION:THIS VIEW OF LIFE is a new online general interest magazine in which all of the content is from an evolutionary perspective. It includes content aggregated from the internet and new content generated by a team of editors, all professional evolutionists, representing eleven subject areas. The editors work for free, in the same spirit as editors of academic journals. Their expertise enables EVOLUTION:THIS VIEW OF LIFE to feature evolutionary science in action, as stimulating for the professional as for the general public.

To help launch the magazine, we are trying to raise $5000 through Kickstarter, which will be used to support the central office and purchase equipment for video and audio recording. Contribute $50 or more and get a cool t-shirt with this logo designed by illustrator Kevin Cannon. Pledge $80 or more and we'll record a videocast with you, so that you can share what evolution means to your view of life.

Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 5:58 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Jerry Coyne on Evolution in Relation to Human Affairs: He Says STOP, I Say GO

Category: Evolution Institute

In 1975--before most current graduate students were born--Edward O. Wilson published his landmark book titled Sociobiology. Its central thesis was that there could be a single science of social behavior, based upon evolutionary theory, that covered all species, from microbes to humans.

With one major exception, Sociobiology was regarded as a triumph. The main bone of contention among evolutionists who studied social behavior concerned ownership. Other authors had the same vision, and even used the term sociobiology, but none of them had Wilson's gift for branding new fields of inquiry.

The exception, of course, involved the inclusion of our own species within the new synthesis. The single chapter that Wilson devoted to this subject resulted in a storm of controversy. It might seem that the battle might pit evolutionary biologists against human-oriented scientists and scholars bent on preserving their cherished notion of human uniqueness, but that's not what happened. Instead, the charge against Wilson, a Harvard professor, was led by two other evolutionary biologists at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, whose academic specialties were paleontology and population genetics, respectively.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 8:37 AM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Jerry Coyne on Cultural Evolution: What Does He Know?

Category: Evolution Institute

In my previous post, I took an esteemed colleague to task for his statements about group selection. In this post I will do the same for his statements on a different subject--cultural evolution. Before continuing, I want to explain why I am zeroing in on Jerry Coyne. It is not because I have been driven insane by his tepid review of my new book The Neighborhood Project (tepid=lukewarm; Jerry likes parts of my book!). Neither do I have any personal animosity toward Jerry. We are colleagues who seldom see each other face to face and don't even interact much professionally. Jerry sticks pretty close to his specialty of speciation in his academic publications and has little reason to cite my academic work (although I have written on speciation earlier in my career). And I have little reason to cite Jerry when I write about my own specialties of group selection and cultural evolution.

Therein lies the problem. When Jerry steps out of his role of practicing scientist and into his role of spokesman about evolution for the general public, it's like Clark Kent transforming into Superman. Suddenly he's an authority on every subject and rounding up the criminals who don't agree with him left and right.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 9:04 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Jerry Coyne on Group Selection: What Does He Know?

Category: Truth and Reconciliation in Group Selection

Scientists who write for the general public must be constantly on their guard. It's so easy to depart from scientific mode and become just another talking head, opining on topics that one knows nothing about.

So it is with Jerry Coyne on the topic of group selection. Jerry is a highly respected evolutionist who writes for the general public in his book Why Evolution Is True and his blog of the same name. When it comes to his research area of speciation, Jerry is a world-class authority. He's also a staunch defender of evolution against creationism and its born-again cousin, intelligent design. When it comes to the topic of group selection, however, he hasn't written a single paper and there's little evidence that he's read the literature. Yet, that doesn't prevent him from holding forth on the topic and scolding others like a schoolteacher wagging his finger at truant students who haven't learned their lesson.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 8:42 AM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Reviewing the Expert Reviews of The Neighborhood Project

Category: Evolution Institute

The Neighborhood Project is written for the full spectrum of readers, from inquisitive high school students to my professorial colleagues. I look forward to reading the reviews by the experts, which I expect to reveal the diversity of opinion that I already know exists among the cognoscenti. So far, there have been three reviews by respected colleagues who unquestionably know their stuff about evolution: Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Laland in the scientific journal Nature, and Jerry Coyne in the Sept 11 Sunday book section of the New York Times.

Kevin's review is my favorite so far, not just because it is laudatory, but because it correctly identifies The Neighborhood Project as comparable in scope to Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, and the revolutionary claims of evolutionary psychologists such as John Tooby and Leda Cosmides in the 1990's. All of these authors were reaching for a comprehensive vision of humanity from an evolutionary perspective, and so am I. The general themes are enacted in the story of how I am trying to make a difference in my city of Binghamton (which tragically has just suffered the worst flood in its history) but the story should not mask my serious intent, which I also convey in my academic articles.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 11:08 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The Neighborhood Project: Putting Evolution to Work in the Real World

Category:

My new book, The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time, was published by Little, Brown last Wednesday and featured on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition today.

My main objective in writing the book is to show how evolutionary science can be used to improve our lives in a practical sense, at scales both small and large. This has been the thrust of my own research over the past five years, both locally in my hometown of Binghamton, New York, and globally through the formation of the Evolution Institute, the first think tank for formulating public policy from an evolutionary perspective.

I use my personal odyssey as a narrative vehicle, but The Neighborhood Project is written as much for my academic colleagues as for the general public. Some of the foundational issues that I address include rethinking evolutionary psychology, cultural change as an evolutionary process, evolution as a new paradigm for economic policy, and how the meaning systems of the future can combine the best of current-day science and religion.

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 5:30 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The Meaning of My Mugs

Category: Atheism as a Stealth Religion

My wife Anne and I have accumulated an assortment of mugs that occupy a shelf of our kitchen cabinet. All of them perform the same function of holding hot liquid, but we seem to have developed a complex system for using them. Rather than grabbing any two for our morning coffee, I feel impelled to pair them with each other.

A mug with a crow on it--the species that Anne studies--gets paired with Coast Guard mug bearing a quote from one of my father's books. An earthenware mug with a fox on it--which Anne doesn't study--is nevertheless used only by Anne and is paired with an earthenware pot bellied mug that is used only be me. Other mugs aren't used at all, especially the glazed ones without images. Past favorites with their handles broken line the back of the shelf. We don't use them, but we don't get rid of them. Why?

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Posted by David Sloan Wilson at 12:40 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

What's Evolution Got To Do With It? V. The Case of Social Psychology

Category: Evolution Institute

Only one reason for ignoring the E-word remains to be considered:

All branches of knowledge should ideally be consistent with each other, but every branch need not be consulted for the study of any particular branch. I rarely feel the need to consult quantum physics when I study evolution, and perhaps evolution rarely needs to be consulted for the study of many traits, in humans and nonhumans alike.

It's true that each of Tinbergen's four questions can be studied in isolation, but the essence of his essay describing the evolutionary perspective is that they are best studied in conjunction with each other. Moreover, what's true for an individual is not true for an entire discipline, as I discussed for the study of proximate mechanisms in the previous post. I therefore conclude that all four reasons for ignoring the E-word fail to pass muster after they have been respectfully considered. Tinbergen's four-question approach needs to be applied to any sizeable human-related subject, just as for any sizeable subject in the biological sciences.

I would like to think that a consensus can be quickly achieved on this matter, but a recent exchange on the relevance of evolution for the field of social psychology indicates that a consensus is a long way off. The exchange appeared on the Edge website in response to an essay on social psychology by Timothy D. Wilson, who happens to be my cousin. Tim included some comments on evolutionary psychology in his essay, which moved Steve Pinker to reply and Dan Gilbert and Hugo Mercier to join the fray. It is worth examining Tim's essay and the exchange in detail, because it represents the state of play at the highest level of expertise. If these folks can't agree on what evolution has to do with it, a broader consensus is indeed a long way off.

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