The Price of Altruism (51 page)

I was sitting beneath a tree in a small park in Paris when I first read about George Price. It was 1999, and Andrew Brown’s
The Darwin Wars: How Stupid Genes Became Selfish Gods
opened with a chapter called “The Deathbed of an Altruist.” It was a mysterious story about a strange American who had come to London, written an equation that drove him first to Christianity, then to selfless aid to the homeless, and finally to suicide. There was some kind of connection between his equation and his life. What a story! I thought. This was the stuff of movies.

At the time I was in the middle of a doctorate and, returning to Oxford, forgot about Price. Seven years later in Jerusalem, while writing an essay review for the
New Republic
on Lee Dugatkin’s book
The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists’ Search for the Origins of Goodness
, the memory came back to me, though the story had always remained in the back of my subconscious mind. Here was Price again, just as enigmatic as before, killing himself on the altar of altruism. But as with Brown, so too with Dugatkin: Price was afforded no more than a few pages. Was this all that was known of him?

Soon I learned that a few people had written about Price somewhat earlier. The source of all other accounts had been Bill Hamilton’s autobiographical book
Narrow Roads of Gene Land
, in which the story of his meeting and subsequent dealings with Price was first revealed. Though he himself had not known Price, Steven Frank, a mathematical evolutionist, had also become interested in his life, and written an article about his scientific contributions to evolutionary genetics in the
Journal of Theoretical Biology
in 1995. Frank had even brought Price’s “The Nature of Selection,” apparently rejected for publication many years before, to posthumous print. So there were those who knew about him and cared.

But it wasn’t until I came across Jim Schwartz’s wonderful article “Death of an Altruist” in the now-defunct magazine
Lingua Franca
that I really became excited. The article was a beautiful exposition of the story, more detailed than anything else that had been written. Somewhat relieved that what had been referred to as “a biography” of Price was only ten pages long, I decided to contact Schwartz. Amazed at how little had been written of this incredible story, I held my breath and prayed that there were papers to work from. With any luck, I thought, there would be much more still to tell.

And so my first and heartfelt thanks go to Jim Schwartz. In preparing his
Lingua Franca
article Jim had contacted and met George’s two daughters, Annamarie and Kathleen, and, as he put it to me over the phone, in the course of his research had “grown very close to George.” Obviously George had been the kind of man who, even from the grave, could stir strong emotions, and it was clear that Jim had developed feelings for him. This makes it all the more special that in true gentlemanly fashion, and in an altruistic spirit of the common pursuit of history, Jim provided me with Kathleen and Annamarie’s contact information, and, more important, with an introduction. Yes, there were papers, thank god. Jim wasn’t certain that they’d be enough for a book, but I could try. Some early family material existed in boxes at the offices of the Edison Price Lighting Company in Queens. George’s own personal papers had been rescued in January 1975 by representatives of the American Consulate in London. Others had been sent to Edison Price some weeks later by Hamilton, who’d fought his own way into the squat and come across more papers that the consulate men had overlooked. In 2003 Kathleen had donated a small portion of these papers to the British Library in London, but the vast majority—notes, letters, diagrams, computer printouts, diaries—had remained in the homes of the two sisters. Over the years a substantial number of people had tried to reach the Price daughters to get their hands on his papers, and it wouldn’t be easy gaining their confidence.

Soon I was conducting long transatlantic phone conversations from Tel Aviv with Kathleen in San Francisco and Annamarie in Solana Beach. Understandably they wanted to know who I was and what I wanted to do before opening up their father’s treasure trove to a complete stranger. Gradually our conversations grew warmer, and in the spring of 2008 I traveled to California to meet Kathleen and Annamarie and finally consult the papers. That the papers provided a world of insight into the details of George’s life, allowing me to reconstruct his story in its full richness, I hope the book demonstrates. This was a joyous discovery, and more than anything a huge relief. But what is more important to me is just how kind and inviting and warmly hospitable Kathleen and Annamarie proved. Sleeping in Kathleen’s home and staying up late nights over wine discussing her memories, dining at Annamarie and her husband Ed’s table and being trusted to share her deepest feelings and thoughts, rummaging through the papers together with both sisters in their respective dens, were more than any lucky historian can ever hope for. Like George, it was obvious, his daughters were special people, and it had been my good fortune to gain their trust. It would be my burden now to tell the story properly.

Precious little had been put on paper about George, but from the start I did not want this to be just a biography: This was going to be a history of a much larger quest. Already I had delved into the immense literature I would need to cover in order to write the book. Others had written about the problem of altruism and the evolution of cooperation, morality, and virtue. There were Richard Dawkins’s classic
The Selfish Gene
, Robert Axelrod’s
The Evolution of Co-operation
, and Matt Ridley’s
The Origin of Virtue
. There were Marc Hauser’s
Moral Minds
and Frans de Waal’s
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
. There was Helena Cronin’s
The Ant and the Peacock
. And there were Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson’s
Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
, Richard Joyce’s
The Evolution of Morality
, Samir Okasha’s
Evolution and the Levels of Selection
, and many others, popular and academic. There were countless studies, articles, essays, and reviews. Some were philosophical accounts; others technical, theoretical, or empirical arguments; still others, like Cronin and Dugatkin, attempts at history. But the more I read the more I felt the need for a book that, in relation to altruism, would put history, science, biography, and philosophy all in one construction without the burden of blowing a particular horn. Most studies advocated one form or level of selection over another, one philosophy at the expense of its rivals, or were overimpressed with the ability of evolution, and a reductive genetics, to explain human goodness. It made it difficult to see the bigger picture, to appreciate the complexity and the nuances. Most acute was the lack of a good encompassing history. Certain pieces of the historical puzzle, like Adrian Desmond’s magisterial
Huxley
, Gregg Mitman’s wonderful
The State of Nature
, and Marek Kohn’s stunningly beautiful
A Reason for Everything
, were in fact already in place. But that wasn’t enough. The story of modern man’s attempt to fathom kindness was a rich one, involving countless disciplines, characters, historical contexts, and scientific facts. It seemed to me that it had yet to be fully told.

Inspired by a novel I had read by the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa,
The Storyteller
, I soon saw that the best way to tell the greater tale of attempts to crack the mystery of altruism, going back to Darwin, was to use George’s life as a counterpoint. To get to the core of the problem, to really touch “Wittgenstein’s wall,” there was no better way than to let George’s incredible story lead the way. By creating a double helix–like structure for the book, George’s own personal tale and the greater problem of the evolution of altruism would reflect and resound off each other, finally becoming inextricably interwoven. Constructing the story this way, I could hope to show the extent to which scientific pursuits are embedded in the people and cultures that are responsible for them. Celebrating the majesty of science, I could also point to its limits; altruism—the meeting place of biology and culture—would be the perfect conduit. If, ultimately, there can be no scientific arbitration of the question of the existence of true, genuine selflessness in man, George’s tragic life might be the closest one could come to understanding why.

Beyond my thanks to all the authors, scholars, and scientists on whose foundations I built to construct my story, I would also like to thank the many people who generously offered to answer my questions, whether in face-to-face interviews or via correspondence. Bill Hamilton’s sister Janet and her husband, Rollin, generously hosted me in their Hampshire home, and I shall always remember the three of us by the fireplace in the evening listening to Tim Jackson’s fictionalized BBC radio play about George, also titled
Death of an Altruist
, embers crackling in the fire. Earlier that day Janet had taken me to meet Tim, a professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and an award-winning radio playwright. I thank Tim, too, for a wonderful afternoon of discussion. His enthusiasm about George was contagious.

Thanks as well to Richard Lewontin, who devoted an afternoon and many subsequent emails to trying to explain Price’s import and trying to figure out together where his scientific style or approach might have come from. The same goes for Warren Ewens, Danny Cohen, Ilan Eshel, Ariel Rubenstein, Joel Cohen, David Haig, and James Crow. I also want to thank Robert Trivers, Steven Frank, and Alan Grafen for answering important questions over the phone or in writing, and Mark Borrello, Ehud Lamm, Nathaniel Comfort, Marc Hauser, Jim Griesemer, Gar Allen, Michael Dietrich, Eva Jablonka, Marion Lamb, Stephen Stearns, David Kohn, Salit Kark, Alice Nicholls, Everett Mendelsohn, Razi Greenfield, and Ayelet Shavit for rich and informing conversations on the subject and, in some cases, for reading parts of the manuscript. Special thanks to Peter Godfrey Smith, who, following a lively conversation at a banquet in Brisbane, Australia, generously took the time to read the entire manuscript and provided invaluable comments. Daniel Kevles has been a warm critic and friend, and I thank him, together with Dudley Andrew and Howard Bloch, for the opportunity to discuss my ideas during a wonderful visit as the guest of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale. Heartfelt thanks go to George C. Williams, sadly unwell but always kind spirited, for his friendly words of encouragement.

Those who knew George Price proved invaluable informants. M. Dan Morris and Richard A. Bader, Stuyvesant classmates of George, shared colorful memories of New York City in the 1930s. George’s old friend from his Chicago days, Al Somit, met me in Solana Beach and shared wonderful stories before and after in correspondence; I thank his wife, Leyla, too, for her recollections. Former colleagues at Harvard’s Department of Chemistry, Gilbert Stork and Leonard Nash, were kind enough to answer queries. At UCL, Ursula Mittwoch and Sam Berry knew George and kindly shared their memories, as did Newton E. Morton on C. A. B. Smith. Christine Hamilton was kind enough to share her memories of George’s visits at her and Bill Hamilton’s Berkshire home, including the very last one before his suicide. I thank Bill’s close friend Peter Henderson for sending me a beautiful description of their time in the Brazilian jungles together, as well as Richard Dawkins for sharing a few memories of Bill and George.

No scholar can do without archives, and many people helped me in this respect. I’ve already mentioned Kathleen and Annamarie Price. A special further thanks goes to Emma Price, Edison Price’s daughter, who welcomed me into her offices in Queens at the Edison Price Lighting Company and provided generous access to invaluable family letters and records. Jeremy Johns at the British Library proved most helpful in navigating through the Price, Hamilton, and Maynard Smith papers, and I thank him warmly for sending me photocopies and for his general kind spirit. Katherine T. Bendo of the Stuyvesant Alumni Association was immensely helpful to me in uncovering George’s high school past. Barbara Meloni at Harvard University Archives, and David Pavelich and Allie Tichenor at Chicago University Archives were wonderful, as was Patricia Canaday at Argonne National Laboratory, Marcia Chapin at Harvard Chemistry, Dawn Stanford at IBM, and Karen Klinkenberg and Jake Williams at the University of Minnesota Medical School. In England the broad knowledge of Peter S. Harper helped me get a grip on the genetics scene at the time, and Brian Parson, funeral specialist, helped me understand how deaths were handled. Immensely helpful were the Tolmers gang, who with great candor and color shared memories both of George and of the times. I thank Nick Wates, Atalia Ten Brink, Ches Chesney, Corrine Pearlman, Paul Nicholson, and Alon Porat. Special thanks go to Asher Dahan and Shmulik Atia, with whom I spoke at length about George’s last days and suicide. Once again I thank Jim Schwartz for generously sharing with me copies of correspondence between George and Joan Jenkins that he himself had gotten from Jenkins before she died. Finally I thank Sylvia Stevens who, when I tracked her down over the phone, after a long silence, said, “You’ve rocked my world on a Friday afternoon!” Sylvia shared sensitive memories of George toward the end of his life that helped illuminate his mental state and gentle spirit.

Life is no fun without friends, and luckily I have many of these and really good ones. First of all, an enormous thank-you to Ben Reis, my loyal and close friend, who was also throughout the writing my sole and assiduous reader. This book is infinitely better due to his extraordinary talents. Toda Ben Adam, and makssssim. Thanks too to David Schisgall, who took the time to read the manuscript and like a good friend told it to me like it is. My friend Noah Efron, a prince among men, afforded me a sabbatical year from my teaching duties at Bar Ilan University so that I could direct all my energies to the writing, and, as always, was the most loving, smart, funny colleague anyone could ever have. I thank Eva Jablonka, too, for her encouragement and wise words of counsel, as well as for her example of how history, science and philosophy all need to be considered as part of a whole.