Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection

228 Pages·2010·1.137 MB·English

by  Mark E. Borrello

Evolutionary Restraints

Evolutionary Restraints
The Contentious History of
Group Selection
mark e. borrello
the university of chicago press chicago and london
mark e. borrello is associate professor of the history of science in the Department of
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2010 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2010
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
isbn-13: 978-0-226-06701-8 (cloth)
isbn-10: 0-226-06701-7 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Borrello, Mark E.
Evolutionary restraints : the contentious history of group selection / Mark E. Borrello.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-226-06701-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-226-06701-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Group selection (Evolution)—
History—20th century. 2. Wynne-Edwards, Vero Copner. I. Title.
qh376.b67 2010
576.8'2—dc22
2009051465
a The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
for regina

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
chapter 1. Charles Darwin and Natural Selection 7
chapter 2. Social Insects, Superorganisms, and Mutual Aid 24
chapter 3. Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards 40
chapter 4. Theory Development 56
chapter 5. Animal Dispersion 75
chapter 6. Critique of Wynne-Edwards 91
chapter 7. The New Paradigm of the Gene 130
chapter 8. The Death of Wynne-Edwards and the Life of an
Idea 152
Notes 171
Bibliography 193
Index 207

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to a number of people for the contributions they have made
to the successful completion of this book. I began thinking about co-
operative breeding behavior in birds as a biology student at Beloit Col-
lege and was fortunate to have been guided by Professors John Jungck
and Ken Yasukawa to think carefully about evolutionary processes and
to consider the historical and philosophical issues that were germane to a
proper understanding and explanation of them. Their influence led me to
pursue graduate study in the history and philosophy of science at Indiana
University, where this project first took shape.
At Indiana it was Frederick B. Churchill who trained me to think and
write like a historian. In our lengthy conversations after seminars, he
helped me hone my ideas about group selection theory and organize them
into a project that was coherent and compelling. I value immensely the
time Fred took to work over my writing and to demonstrate in his own
work how essential a true understanding of the scientist’s ideas and context
was to getting the history right. I am also deeply indebted to Elisabeth A.
Lloyd. As perfect a mentor Fred was as a historian, Lisa provided the
ideal philosophical foil. She sharpened my analytical abilities and helped
me to wade through the mountains of philosophical literature on the lev-
els of selection question. Lisa was an invaluable guide, and she was also
incredibly generous in introducing me and my work to the philosophers
who had written those mountains of literature on the levels of selec-
tion. These informal conversations with David Hull, Elliott Sober, Bill
Wimsatt, and Michael Ruse, among others, convinced me that the history
of group selection needed to be written and might inform the philosophi-
cal and scientific conversation.