EVOLUTION FOR EVERYONE

How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives

By David Sloan Wilson

390 pp. Delacorte Press. $24.

Just as in the classic clashes of nature, where every mutational upgrade in a carnivore’s strength or cunning is soon countered by a speedier or more paranoid model of antelope, so the pitched struggle between evolutionary theory and its deniers has yielded a bristling diversity of ploys and counterploys. The heavyhanded biblical literalism of creationist science evolves into the feints and curlicues of intelligent design, and the casual dismissiveness with which scientists long regarded the anti-evolutionists gives way to a belated awareness that, gee, the public doesn’t seem to realize how fatuous the other side is, and maybe it’s time to combat the creationist phylum head on. And so, over the last few years, scientists have unleashed a blitzkrieg of books in defense of Darwinism, summarizing the Everest of supportive evidence for evolutionary theory, filleting the arguments of the naysayers or reciting, yet again, the story of Charles Darwin, depressive naturalist extraordinaire, whose increasingly pervasive avuncular profile has lofted him to logo status on par with Einstein and the Nike swoosh.

David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, takes a different and decidedly refreshing approach. Rather than catalog its successes, denounce its detractors or in any way present evolutionary theory as the province of expert tacticians like himself, Wilson invites readers inside and shows them how Darwinism is done, and at lesson’s end urges us to go ahead, feel free to try it at home. The result is a sprightly, absorbing and charmingly earnest book that manages a minor miracle, the near-complete emulsifying of science and the “real world,” ingredients too often kept stubbornly, senselessly apart. Only when Wilson seeks to add religion to the mix, and to show what natural, happy symbionts evolutionary biology and religious faith can be, does he begin to sound like a corporate motivational speaker or a political candidate glad-handing the crowd.

In Wilson’s view, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has the beauty of being both simple and profound. Unlike quantum mechanics or the general theory of relativity, the basic concepts behind evolutionary theory are easy to grasp; and once grasped, he argues, they can be broadly applied to better understand ourselves and the world — the world both as it is and as it might be, with the right bit of well-informed coaxing. Wilson has long been interested in the evolution of cooperative and altruistic behavior, and much of the book is devoted to the premise that “goodness can evolve, at least when the appropriate conditions are met.” As he sees it, all of life is characterized by a “cosmic” struggle between good and evil, the high-strung terms we apply to behaviors that are either cooperative or selfish, civic or anomic. The constant give-and-take between me versus we extends down to the tiniest and most primal elements of life. Short biochemical sequences may want to replicate themselves ad infinitum, their neighboring sequences be damned; yet genes get together under the aegis of cells and reproduce in orderly fashion as genomes, as collectives of sequences, setting aside some of their immediate selfish urges for the sake of long-term genomic survival. Cells further collude as organs, and organs pool their talents and become bodies. The conflict between being well behaved, being good, not gulping down more than your share, and being selfish enough to get your fair share, “is eternal and encompasses virtually all species on earth,” he writes, and it likely occurs on any other planet that supports life, too, “because it is predicted at such a fundamental level by evolutionary theory.” How do higher patterns of cooperative behavior emerge from aggregates of small, selfish units? With carrots, sticks and ceaseless surveillance. In the human body, for example, nascent tumor cells arise on a shockingly regular basis, each determined to replicate without bound; again and again, immune cells attack the malignancies, destroying the outlaw cells and themselves in the process. The larger body survives to breed, and hence spawn a legacy far sturdier than any tumor mass could manage.

As with our bodies, so with our behaviors. Wilson explores the many fascinating ways in which humans are the consummate group-thinking, team-playing animal. The way we point things out to one another, for example, is unique among primates. “Apes raised with people learn to point for things that they want but never point to call the attention of their human caretakers to objects of mutual interest,” Wilson writes, “something that human infants start doing around their first birthday.” The eyes of other apes are dark across their entire span and thus are hard to follow, but the contrast between the white sclera and colored iris of the human eye makes it difficult for people to conceal the direction in which they are looking. In the interdependent, egalitarian context of the tribe, the ancestral human setting, Wilson says, “it becomes advantageous for members of the team to share information, turning the eyes into organs of communication in addition to organs of vision.” Humans are equipped with all the dispositional tools needed to establish and maintain order in the commons. Studies have revealed a deep capacity for empathy, a willingness to trust others and become instant best friends; and an equally strong urge to punish cheaters, to exact revenge against those who buck group rules for private gain.