Overview

Contemporary thinking in evolutionary biology is that competition among individuals is the key to understanding natural selection. When competition exists, it is obvious that conflict arises; the emergence of co-operation, however, is less straightforward and calls for analysis. Much research is now focused on defining and expanding the evolutionary models of co-operation. Understanding the mechanisms of co-operation has relevance for fields other than biology. Anthropology, economics, mathematics, political science, primatology and psychology are adopting the evolutionary approach and developing analogies based on it. Similarly, biologists use elements of economic game theory and analyse co-operation in ""evolutionary games"". Despite this, exchanges between researchers in these different disciplines have been limited. Seeking to fill this gap, the 90th Dahlem Workshop was convened. This book, which grew out of that meeting, addresses such topics as emotions in human co-operation, reciprocity, biological markets, co-operation and conflict in multi-cellularity, genomic and intercellular co-operation, the origins of human co-operation and the cultural evolution of co-operation.

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9780262083263

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This timely monograph will prove essential reading - not only as a state-of-the-art overview, but also as an informed agenda for future research. -- Mike Mesterton-Gibbons, American Journal of Human Biology A revolution is happening in the borderland between cellular evolution and the evolution of whole organisms and cooperating entities in a community. The authors of the papers in this book are addressing this revolution in a cogent and clear manner. There is much to explain about the cooperative or not-so-cooperative behavior of homo sapiens, and the work in this volume goes a long way toward providing a clear explanation. --Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana University Although most of us teaching animal behavior and evolutionary biology treat the evolution of cooperation as a done deal, deep down we all know of examples where behavior does not fit current theory. This book pulls no punches in listing these discrepancies, and provides the best synopsis I have read of both the problems and potential solutions. Of particular value is its broad scope covering the entire scale of cooperative liaisons from intragenomic interactions to market behavior between different species. --Jack Bradbury, Robert G. Engel Professor of Ornithology and Director, Macaulay Library, Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology The book offers a surprising wealth of ideas on the biological and cultural evolution of cooperation. It presents exciting and thought-provoking reading material for everybody interested in the subject matter. --Reinhard Selten, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences in 1994, and Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Bonn

Author Information

Peter Hammerstein is Professor in Organismic Evolution at the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University, Berlin and an external member of the interdisciplinary Santa Fe Institute.

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