Evolutionary Restraints – The Contentious History of Group Selection - Hardcover

Borrello, Mark E

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226067017 ISBN 13: 9780226067018

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

Much of the history of the evolutionary debate since Darwin has focused on the level at which natural selection occurs. Most biologists acknowledge multiple levels of selection - from the gene, the trait, and the organism, to the family, the group, and the species. However, it is the debate about group selection that Mark E. Borrello focuses on in "Evolutionary Restraints". Tracing the history of biological attempts to determine whether selection could lead to the evolution of fitter groups, Borrello takes as his focus the British naturalist V. C. Wynne-Edwards, who proposed that animals could regulate their own population levels and thereby avoid overexploitation of their food and other resources. By the mid-twentieth century, Wynne-Edwards became the primary advocate for group selection theory and precipitated a debate that engaged the most significant evolutionary biologists, including Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, G. C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins. The resultant interpretations and arguments bled out into broader conversations about population regulation, environmental crises, and the evolution of human and animal social behavior. "Evolutionary Restraints" illuminates both the process of science and the role of controversy in the process. From its origins in Darwin's own thinking, this debate, Borrello reminds us, remains relevant and alive to this day.

About this title

About the Author

Mark E. Borrello is associate professor of the history of science in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226067017
• ISBN 13: 9780226067018
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208