Evolution, games, and God
Subtitle: the principle of cooperation
By: edited by Martin A. Nowak, Sarah Coakley
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 400
ISBN-13: 9780674047976
Subjects: Altruism; Cooperation; Social aspects; Evolution (Biology); Philosophy; Self-sacrifice
Description: "According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism's reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors--rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms "cooperation" and "altruism." Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation--a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another--arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism--cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good--as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Why cooperation makes a difference / Sarah Coakley and Martin A. Nowak; title: "Ready to aid one another" : Darwin on nature, God, and cooperation / John Hedley Brooke; title: Altruism : morals from history / Thomas Dixon; title: Evolution and "cooperation" in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America : science, theology, and the social gospel / Heather D. Curtis; title: Five rules for the evolution of cooperation / Martin A. Nowak; title: Mathematical models of cooperation / Christoph Hauert; title: Economics and evolution : complementary perspectives on cooperation / Johan Almenberg and Anna Dreber; title: Social prosthetic systems and human motivation : one reason why cooperation is fundamentally human / Stephen M. Kosslyn; title: The uniqueness of human cooperation : cognition, cooperation, and religion / Dominic D.P. Johnson; title: Self-denial and its discontents : toward clarification of the intrapersonal conflict between "selfishnes" and "altruism" / Maurice Lee; title: Unpredicted outcomes in the games of life / Jeffrey P. Scholss; title: What can game theory tell us about humans? / Justin C. Fisher; title: How not to fight about cooperation / Ned Hall; title: The moral organ : a prophylaxis against the whims of culture / Marc D. Hauser; title: A new case for Kantianism : evolution, cooperation, and deontological claims in human society / Friedrich Lohmann; title: Nature, normative grammars, and moral judgments / Jean Porter; title: The Christian love ethic and evolutionary "cooperation" : the lessons and limits of Eudaimonism and game theory / Timothy P. Jackson; title: Altruism, normalcy, and God / Alexander Pruss; title: Evolution, altruism, and God : why the levels of emergent complexity matter / Philip Clayton; title: The problem of evil and cooperation / Michael Rota; title: Evolution, cooperation, and divine providence / Sarah Coakley.