"Michael Ragland"  wrote in message
news:cbumkn$1r4l$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
>
> Note: I have not read the book but since I have an interest in group
> selection.individual selection/natural selection I decided to post these
> few obscenely glowing reviews. From what I've read on the web, however,
> it seems true most recommend the first half of the book over the second
> half.

> [excerpt from first review]
> I was very impressed with the first half of the book, in which they
> justify a group-selection model for adaptive evolution that can explain
> a persistent strain of altruism. What they show is that selection can
> take place at the level of a group of individuals in many more sorts of
> situations than were thought possible. (A nice bonus of this approach is
> that kin selection can be explained more simply using this more general
> context of the group.) Groups, however ephemeral, do have a role to play
> in selection.
> The second half of the book is less convincing, as it involves
> psychological and philosophical arguments for "psychological altruism"
> in humans ...

> [excerpt from second review]
> ... Then, he goes on to offer us the theeoretical foundation we need
> to make group selection plausible. There are mechanisms overlooked by
> the quantitative theorists that make group selection a far more viable
> process than they give it credit for. If youre a lay person, you may
> think "of course - whats the big deal." But if youre an academic
> evolutionist educated in the last 30 years, you need this book; your
> thinking about altruism and fitness of communities will be changed
> forever. All this is in the first half of the book. The second half,
> presumably contributed by Sober, is much less focused and scientific,
> more apt to dwell on definitions and philosophical distinctions. The
> attempt to connect the sound conclusions of the books first half to
> attitudes about human cultures is both more speculative and somehow less
> ambitious and important than the books first half.

I agree that the first half is better than the second half, but I
had the impression that the first half was Sobor's and the second
half Wilson's - exactly the opposite of the second reviewer.  I
would appreciate the opinion of someone familiar with the work of
both authors.

My main objection to the book is that while it explains the difference
between the "old group selection" (discredited) and the "new group
selection" (plausible), it then goes on to forget this distinction
and speculate on human altruism as if the "old group selection"
mechanisms were working.  Michael's other post, quoting Campbell,
illustrates one unfortunate result.  People just don't "get"
the distinction.

The first reviewer above also doesn't "get" it, when (s)he writes:
"Groups, however ephemeral, do have a role to play in selection."

No! No! No!  The correct lesson to take from the "new group selection"
is that groups have a role ONLY IF they are ephemeral and if the
organisms in those groups do most of their breeding outside the
group.

Trying to find reasons for human altruism in inbred human tribal
structures is an appeal to the discredited "old group selection".
It just doesn't work without reciprocity or (equivalently) the
punishment of deviants from the group's altruistic norms.  In which
case, it is no longer necessary to invoke any kind of group selection
- or at least not group selection as it is currently understood in
the "new" and "old" variants.
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