The Group Selection Squad

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A group of over 40 scientists on three continents founded by multi-disciplinarian Howard Bloom in 1995 to confront a basic problem in evolutionary biology and in evolutionary psychology--"the tyranny of individual selection".

[edit] History

From 1964 to 1996, mainstream evolutionary thinkers embraced an idea called "individual selection"--a key to an overarching evolutionary theory called "neodarwinism". Neodarwinians were so certain that their view was the only evolutionary perspective that mattered that they brazenly called their approach "the modern synthesis".

Writes Bloom, in his book The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, "In 1962, the Scottish ecologist V.C. Wynne-Edwards, a careful observer of his country's native red grouse, concluded that these birds sometimes sacrificed their reproductive privileges to keep their flock from starvation. The grouse, Edwards contended, sensed the amount of food the moors could provide each year and adjusted their behavior accordingly, delaying breeding when supplies looked meager or even opting for total chastity. The interests of the group, concluded Edwards, overrode those of the individual".

The neodarwinians declared Wynne-Edwards' view, "group selectionism", taboo. From the 1960s until the early 1990s, they humiliated Wynne-Edwards, using him as what The Lucifer Principle calls "the poster boy for group selection." In 1986, they did worse. When Wynne-Edwards published what he regarded as his strongest argument ever for group selection, the book Evolution Through Group Selection, he was ignored. Wynne-Edwards died at the age of 90 in January of 1997 in a nursing home in Scotland[1], still feeling like an outcast.

Bloom believed that embracing both group selection and individual selection was vital to the progress of evolutionary theory. So did evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, who had promoted the concept of "multi-level selection" for decades.

With strong support from Wilson, The Group Selection Squad worked to make group selection respectable. It did so by landing coverage of the group selection controversy in publications like Science News--which gave the topic two covers. The Group Selection Squad's ultimate triumph was a September 24, 1996 story on the cover of The New York Times science section featuring David Sloan Wilson. (See David Berreby. Enthralling or Exasperating: Select One. New York Times. September 24, 1996, Section C, Page 1 [2].) Berreby's feature was the first of fifteen New York Times stories that gave David Sloan Wilson and his multi-selectionist views respectability.

The Group Selection Squad disbanded in 1996, its job complete. Many of its members went on to become part of The International Paleopsychology Project.

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[edit] References:

For the group selectionist and multi-level selectionist perspective, see:

V.C. Wynne-Edwards, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior, Hafner, New York, 1962.

V.C. Wynne-Edwards. Evolution Through Group Selection. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publishers, 1986.

D. S. Wilson, E. Sober, "Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences." The behavioral and brain sciences, December, 1994: 585.

David Sloan Wilson. "Human Groups as Units of Selection." Science, 30 June 1997: 1816-1817.

Christopher Boehm. "Impact of the Human Egalitarian Syndrome on Darwinian Selection Mechanics." The American Naturalist, July 1997, Volume 150, Special Supplement: S100-S120.

Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. Unto Others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.

David Sloan Wilson. "Adaptive genetic variation and human evolutionary psychology." Ethology and Sociobiology, 15, 1994: 219 235.

David Sloan Wilson. "Reply to Len Nunney." In HBES-l (Human Behavior and Evolution Society electronic bulletin board, December 13, 1995)

David Sloan Wilson. "Reply to Joseph Soltis, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Richerson: Can Group Functional Behaviors Evolve by Cultural Group Selection? An Empirical Test." Current Anthropology, June 1995: 473-494.

David Sloan Wilson. "Incorporating group selection into the adaptationist program: a case study involving human decision making." In Evolutionary social psychology, edited by J. Simpson & D. Kendricks. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997: 345-386.

Howard Bloom. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History. New York: Grove-Atlantic, 1998.

Howard Bloom. Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century.

For the individual selectionist approach, see:

W.D. Hamilton (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior, I and II. Journal of theoretical biology, 7, 1-52.

G. Williams (1966). Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

R. Axelrod, & W.D. Hamilton (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science, 211, 1390-1396.

W.D. Hamilton (1991). Selection of selfish and altruistic behavior in some extreme models. In J. S.

Eisenberg, & W. S. Dillon (Ed.), Man and beast: comparative social behavior (pp. 57-92). Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

R.L. Trivers (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57.

R.L. Trivers (1985). Social evolution. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummins.

David M. Buss. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.

Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, editors. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Robert Wright. The Moral Animal: Why we are the way we are: The new science of evolutionary psychology. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

David P. Barash. Sociobiology and Behavior New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company: 1977.

[edit] See also

Group selection