The Price of Altruism (67 page)
Read The Price of Altruism Online
Authors: Oren Harman
53.
Peter Singer,
The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1981); Christopher Boehm,
Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), argues that we are laden with two conflicting evolutionary substrates: the foundational animal substrate reflecting hierarchy and status, and the overlaying cultural substrate allowing for genuine altruism. He finds this deeply embedded ambiguity in human nature both worrisome and hopeful. See also Stearns, “Are We Stalled Part Way Through a Major Evolutionary Transition from Individual to Group?” for an argument that humanity is stalled between individual and group selection.
54.
J. Moll, F. Krueger, R. Zahn, M. Pardini, R. de Oliveira-Souza, and J. Grafman, “Human Fronto-mesolimbic Networks Guide Decisions About Charitable Donation,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103 (2006), 15623–28.
55.
Marc Hauser,
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
(New York: Ecco, 2006); S. Anderson, H, Damasio, D. Tranel, and A. R. Damasio, “Impairment of Social and Moral Behavior Related to Early Damage in Human Prefrontal Cortex,”
Nature Neuroscience
2 (1999), 1032–37. See also Marco Iacoboni, “Imitation, Empathy and Mirror Neurons,”
Annual Review of Psychology
60 (2009), 653–70 for a presentation of the ways in which recent discoveries on the action of “mirror-neurons” complement cognitive models of imitation and social psychology studies on empathy.
56.
Zoe R. Donaldson and Larry J. Young, “Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and the Neurogenetics of Sociality,”
Science
332 (2008), 900–904; S. Israel, E. Lerer, I. Shalev, F. Uzefovsky, M. Riebold, E. Laiba, R. Bachner-Melman, A. Maril, G. Bornstein, A. Knafo, and R. Ebstein, “The Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Contributes to Prosocial Fund Allocations in the Dictator Game and the Social Value Orientations Task,”
PloS ONE
4 (2009), e5535.
57.
“Academic Appeals to Oxbridge Students for an Egg Donor,”
Daily Telegraph
, December 4, 2008.
CHAPTER 14: LAST DAYS
1.
Wates,
The Battle for Tolmers Square
, 9, 64; G. A. Hobbins,
St. Pancras Chronicle
, March 24, 1972, quoted in ibid., 65.
2.
George Price letter to Kathleen Price, August 28, 1974, GPP.
3.
Communications with Sylvia Stevens, February 15 and March 18, 2008, May 11, 2009.
4.
On Edison Price see Stanley Abercrombie, “Edison Price: His Name Is No Accident,”
Architecture Plus
1 (August 1973); Jonathan Glancey, “The Century’s Leading Light,”
The Guardian
, October 25, 1997; Robert M. Thomas, Jr., “Edison A. Price, Lighting Designer, Dies at 79,”
New York Times
, October 17, 1997.
5.
Communication with Sylvia Stevens, March 18, 2008.
6.
Henry Noel letter to George Price, August 7, 1974, GPP.
7.
George Price letter to Bill Hamilton, August 21, 1974, BLGPC, KPX1_2.5.
8.
George Price letter to Miss Sara Smith, August 27, 1974, BLGPC, BL:KPX1_1.8.
9.
Ibid.
10.
George Price letter to Kathleen Price, August 28, 1974, GPP.
11.
George Price letter to Richard Lewontin, May 17, 1969 and Lewontin’s response, June 16, 1969. I thank Richard Lewontin for kindly sending me their correspondence.
12.
Richard Lewontin letter to George Price, March 13, 1974.
13.
James Crow letter to C. A. B. Smith, October 24, 1974. I thank Jim Crow for kindly sending me this correspondence.
14.
C. A. B. Smith letter to James Crow, November 1, 1974.
15.
Ibid.
16.
George Price letter to Richard Lewontin, June 13, 1974.
17.
Richard Lewontin letter to George Price, August 27, 1974.
18.
George Price letter to Joan Jenkins, GPP, June 28, 1974.
19.
Communication with Sylvia Stevens, March 18, 2008.
20.
George Price letter to Joan Jenkins, October 7, 1974; Jim Schwartz notes.
21.
Joan Jenkins letter to George Price, GPP, October 16, 1974; Lewis Florman letter to George Price, October 11, 1974, GPP.
22.
George Price letter to Trevor Russell, November 5, 1974, GPP.
23.
Interview with Shmulik Atia, May 4, 2008; interview with Asher Dahan, May 7, 2008; George Price letter to Bill Hamilton, November 20, 1974, GPP.
24.
George was referring to Dr. Ronald Ng, whom he had met some months back in the computer room at UCL: George Price letter to Dr. Ronald Ng, November 26, 1974, GPP.
25.
George Price letter to Edison Price, November 25, 1974, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.1.18; drafts of the letters, GPP.
26.
Interviews with Atia and Dahan.
27.
George Price letter to Kathleen Price, November 5, 1974, GPP.
28.
For two rather interesting appreciations of Thompson see Caoimghghin S. Breathnach, “Francis Thompson (1859–1907): A Medical Truant and His Troubled Heart,”
Journal of Medical Biography
16, no. 1 (2008), 57–62, and “Francis Thompson—Student, Addict, Poet,”
Journal of the Irish Medical Association
45 (1959), 98–103.
29.
J. R. R. Tolkien,
The Book of Lost Tales
, part 1, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984), 29.
30.
Bernardo and Chrissy letter and note to George Price, November 30 and 31, 1974, GPP.
31.
Dr. O. W. Hill letter to George Price, December 2, 1974, GPP; George Price letter to Bill and Chris Hamilton, December 10, 1974, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.1.19.
32.
Communication with Chris Hamilton, November 18, 2007; Bill Hamilton letter to Edison Price, February 15, 1975, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.1.20; Bill Hamilton letter to Al Somit, October 16, 1996, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.2.2. 2.
33.
The paper was eventually published as “Innate Social Aptitude in Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics,” in
Biosocial Anthropology
, ed. Robin Fox (London: Malaby Press, 1975), and is discussed and printed, respectively, in Hamilton,
Narrow Roads
, 315–28 and 329–51. I discuss the paper in chapter 13.
34.
Bill Hamilton letter to Dr. Kelly, undated (circa December 19, 1974), BLWHC, Z1X102_1.1.18.
EPILOGUE
1.
Interview with Shmulik Atia, May 4, 2008.
2.
Ibid.; interview with Asher Dahan, May 7, 2008.
3.
Handwritten notes taken by Hamilton at the inquest, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.2.3.2.
4.
Ibid.; draft of a letter to Sylvia found in George’s papers, GPP.
5.
“Jesus Hot Line,”
Sennet
, January 15, 1975.
6.
Bill Hamilton letter to Edison Price, February 15, 1975, BLWHC, Z1X102_1.1.20. The American Consulate sent what it collected to Kathleen; what Hamilton found he sent to George’s brother, Edison.
7.
Hamilton,
Narrow Roads
, 174; George had been working on methods of programming and using a significance test suggested by Warren Ewens in 1972, and applying them to data on enzyme polymorphisms collected at the Galton. “Test of the Neutrality Hypothesis,” written on behalf of George R. Price, came out in the
Annals of Human Genetics
(care of C. A. B. Smith) 39 (1976), 471–73. Years later, Steven Frank was responsible for bringing “The Nature of Selection” to print in the
Journal of Theoretical Biology
175 (1995), 389–96.
8.
Bill Hamilton letter to Edison Price, February 15, 1975; Hamilton,
Narrow Roads
, 321.
9.
The posters and pamphlets appear in Wates,
The Battle for Tolmers Square
, 178–79.
10.
A full description of the court proceedings and subsequent events can be found in ibid., 180–88.
11.
Ibid., 183; “A Square Deal for the People,”
Hampstead and Highgate Express
, June 6, 1975.
12.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1974), 6.52, 7.
13.
Frans de Waal,
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved
(Princeton: Prince ton University Press, 2006), 163. See also his new book,
The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society
(New York: Harmony, 2009).
14.
In fact it is very likely that the new, post-neo-Darwinian umbrella paradigm, being called the “Epigenetic Turn,” which includes all forms of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic inheritance and their interaction with the broader environment, will necessitate a meaningful reworking of the foundations of our understanding of the evolution of human behavior.
15.
Adam Smith,
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1759; reprint, New York: Modern Library, 1937), 9.
16.
Hamilton, too, might have benefited from this insight. An uncompromising rationalist, he came to believe that there is nothing interesting that man cannot hope to understand, including his own morality. This led him, among other things, to support eugenic measures that seemed to many outrageous.
17.
See Jonathan Haidt’s essay “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion,” posted at
The Edge
, September 22, 2007, for an interesting argument about religious/conservative people’s usage of an expanded moral-salience plate (compared to liberals) to direct their behavior.
18.
Since the Price equation is a statistical, not a causal, decomposition of selection, there is an interesting reflection of this problem in the very bones of the math itself. In the end the Price equation can tell you that a trait evolved, but why it evolved remains elusive.
19.
Bill Hamilton letter to Kathleen Price, June 25, 1997, BLWHC, BL:Z1X101_1.2.2.3.
20.
“Love is the Greatest!” found in George’s scattered papers, GPP.
APPENDIX 1: COVARIANCE AND KIN SELECTION
1.
Here I follow S. A. Frank, “George Price’s Contributions to Evolutionary Genetics,”
Journal of Theoretical Biology
175 (1995), 374–75.
2.
D. C. Queller, “Kinship, Reciprocity and Synergism in the Evolution of Social Behaviour,”
Nature
318 (1985), 366–67. See also his “A General Model for Kin Selection,”
Evolution
46 (1992), 376–80.
3.
W. D. Hamilton, “Selfish and Spiteful Behaviour in an Evolutionary Model,”
Nature
228 (1970), 1218–20.
APPENDIX 2: THE FULL PRICE EQUATION AND LEVELS OF SELECTION
1.
Once again, I follow Frank, “George Price’s Contributions to Evolutionary Genetics,” 375–79. Samir Okasha,
Evolution and the Levels of Selection
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), provides a full, fleshed-out interpretation for those interested.
2.
A. Robertson, “A Mathematical Model for the Culling Process in Dairy Cattle,”
Animal Production
8 (1966), 95–108; C. C. Li, “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection,”
Nature
214 (1967), 505–6.