1. See Amir (2007) and King (2015) for excellent biographies of Teilhard. I devote a chapter to him in my book The Neighborhood Project (Wilson 2011) and also was among several interviewed about him by Krista Tippett on her radio show On Being: www.onbeing.org/programs/ursula-king-andrew-revkin-and-david-sloan-wilson-teilhard-de-chardins-planetary-mind-and-our-spiritual-evolution/.
1. It is remarkable that such a powerful theory can be described in a single paragraph. I am assuming that my reader knows at least this much about Darwin’s theory. For a longer introduction, please consult my earlier book Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (Wilson 2007).
2. Dobzhansky (1973).
3. Wilson (1973).
4. I explore this theme in an interview with Peter and Rosemary Grant, the couple who is world-famous for studying the Galápagos finches, in the online magazine This View of Life (hereafter TVOL): https://evolution-institute.org/article/when-evolutionists-acquire-superhuman-powers-a-conversation-with-peter-and-rosemary-grant/.
5. The history of sociology and cultural anthropology in relation to evolutionary theory are the topics of my TVOL interviews with Russell Schutt (https://evolution-institute.org/article/why-did-sociology-declare-independence-from-biology-and-can-they-be-reunited-an-interview-with-russell-schutt/) and Robert Paul (https://evolution-institute.org/article/cultural-anthropology-and-cultural-evolution-tear-down-this-wall-a-conversation-with-robert-paul/).
6. Beinhocker (2006).
7. Veblen (1898).
8. The seminal work is Nelson and Winter’s (1982) “An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change.”
9. Frank, R. (2011).
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s56Z5l0fYV0.
2. Hodgson (2004). I highly recommend Hodgson’s other work listed in the bibliography as an example of an evolutionary worldview leading to a positive agenda for social change.
3. See Bashford and Chaplin (2016) for a good modern biography of Malthus and his work.
4. See Francis (2007) for a good modern biography of Spencer and his work.
5. Of the many biographies of Darwin, I recommend the two volumes of Janet Browne (1995, 2002).
6. Darwin (1871), vol. 1, p. 162.
7. See Brookes (2004) for a good modern biography of Galton and his work.
8. http://galton.org/essays/1870–1879/galton-1872-fort-rev-prayer.pdf.
9. See Barr (1997) for a centennial assessment of Huxley, whose relationship with Darwin is well told by Browne (1995, 2002).
10. See Provine (2001) for a fascinating account of this period of evolutionary thought.
11. See Paradis and Williams (2016) for modern commentaries in addition to Huxley’s original essay. “I doubt whether”: p. 23.
12. Ibid., p. 29.
13. Ibid., p. 95.
14. See Dugatkin (2011) for a good modern biography of Kropotkin and his work.
15. A. Novoa (2016) describes how Darwin’s theory was refracted through the lens of different cultures.
16. Richards (2013); the title essay is excerpted in Wilson and Johnson (2016b).
17. All quotes in this section are taken from Richards (2013).
18. For an in-depth discussion of Dewey, see my interview with the philosopher Trevor Pearce in Wilson and Johnson (2016b).
19. Dewey, J. (1910), pp. 1–2.
20. See Jablonka and Lamb (2006), Richerson and Boyd (2005), and Henrich (2015) for more on these topics.
21. See my interview with the sociologist Russell Schutt in Wilson and Johnson (2016b) and books by Geoffrey Hodgson in the Literature Cited section for more on the history of sociology and other disciplines in the social sciences in relation to evolution.
1. I first explored this theme in a 2009 blog: http://scienceblogs.com/evolution/2009/10/20/goodbye-huffpost-hello-science/ [inactive].
2. Tinbergen’s classic article outlining the four questions was “On Aims and Methods of Ethology” (Tinbergen 1963). His book The Curious Naturalist (Tinbergen 1969) is wonderful to read and shows how he employed his “four-question” approach in his own work. Bateson and Laland (2013) provides a modern appreciation and update.
3. The Wikipedia entry for laissez-faire documents the origin of the phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire#Etymology_and_usage.
4. See Bodkin (1990) and Kricher (2009) for reviews of the balance of nature concept.
5. For more on the need to go beyond laissez-faire in economics, see Wilson and Kirman (2016), Colander and Kupers (2014), and Wilson and Gowdy (2014).
6. A classic article by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (1979) argues against interpreting everything as an adaptation. My TVOL interview with Richard Lewontin provides fascinating historical context: https://evolution-institute.org/article/the-spandrels-of-san-marco-revisited-an-interview-with-richard-c-lewontin/.
7. Lloyd, Wilson, and Sober (2014) provides a tutorial on evolutionary mismatch.
8. It is a striking fact about Tinbergen’s function question that it provides a solid scientific foundation for holistic statements such as “the parts permit, but do not cause, the properties of the whole.” See Wilson (1988) and Campbell (1990) for more.
9. See my This View of Life interview with Lenski for more: https://evolution-institute.org/article/evolutionary-biologys-master-craftsman-an-interview-with-richard-lenski/.
1. See Schwab (2012) for a good trade book on the evolution of eyes.
2. Gómez et al. (2009).
3. My account of eye development is based largely on the website Eye, Brain, and Vision, which is maintained by David Hubel, one of the giants of the field: http://hubel.med.harvard.edu/index.html.
4. Morgan et al. (1975).
5. This and the rest of the examples in this section are drawn from Sherwin et al. (2012), Goldschmidt and Jacobsen (2014), and Cordain et al. (2002).
6. The term “natural experiment” refers to a comparison that can be made while holding other factors constant, similar to a planned experiment. In this case, comparing ethnic Chinese living in Singapore and Australia allows the amount of time spent outdoors to be evaluated while holding other behaviors associated with being Chinese constant. Of course, a natural experiment is seldom as well controlled as an actual experiment.
7. Nuland (2003).
8. Gaynes and the American Society for Microbiology (2011).
9. For a good popular account of microbiomes, see Yong (2006). The academic literature that I consulted for this section includes Bloomfield et al. (2016), Dethlefsen et al. (2007), Flandroy et al. (2018), Hanski et al. (2012), Miller and Raison (2016), Rook (2012, 2013), Rook and Lowry (2008), and Sender et al. (2016).
10. Sender et al. (2016).
11. Miller and Raison (2016).
12. Visit Graham Rook’s website for this and other interviews, along with many other resources to learn about the hygiene hypothesis: https://www.grahamrook.net.
13. Hanski et al. (2012); see also Rook (2013) and Flandroy et al. (2018).
14. This phrase was coined by John Bowlby, a pioneer in the study of human development from an evolutionary perspective. See Bowlby (1990) for a review of his work.
15. Lickliter and Virkar (1989).
16. For an excellent trade book on this material, see Gray (2013). For an academic review of the material in this section, see Bjorklund and Ellis (2014). For applications to early childhood education, see Gray (2013) and Geary and Berch (2016). For an accessible online article, see https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm.
17. Darling-Hammond and Snyder (1992).
18. Schweinhart and Weikart (1997).
19. Barr (2013).
20. DeLoache et al. (2010).
21. Zimmerman et al. (2010).
22. Radesky et al. (2014).
23. Gray (2013).
1. For a concise book-length account of this material, please consult my book Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others (Wilson 2015).
2. Wilson and Wilson (2007).
3. In addition to the epigenetics that takes place during the lifetime of a single organism, which is required for cell differentiation, epigenetics can also be transgenerational and therefore an inheritance system in its own right that operates alongside genetic inheritance. See Jablonka and Lamb (2006) for more on that topic.
4. Martincorena et al. (2015).
5. See my This View of Life interview with cancer researcher Athena Aktipis for more on the novelty of evolutionary theory for cancer research: https://evolution-institute.org/article/the-evolutionary-ecology-of-cancer-an-interview-with-athena-aktipis/.
6. Muir (1995), Craig and Muir (1995), Muir et al. (2010).
7. Margulis (1970).
8. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry (1995, 1999).
9. Szathmáry and Maynard Smith (1997), Higgs and Lehman (2015).
10. Holldobler and Wilson (2008), Seeley (1996, 2010).
11. Seeley (2010).
12. Ehrenpreis et al. (1978).
13. Boehm (1999, 2011).
14. https://evolution-institute.org/article/evolution-and-morality-i-simon-blackburn/.
1. For a highly readable account of how the immune system works, see Sompayrac (2008).
2. Benard (2008).
3. For a biography of Skinner, see Bjork (1993). For a history of behavioral therapies as told by their founders’ personal histories, see O’Donohue et al. (2001).
4. For histories of the cognitive revolution, see Miller (2003) and Gardner (1985).
5. The most influential book on evolutionary psychology is Barkow et al. (1992). For a modern assessment of the field written for a general audience, see the special edition of TVOL titled What’s Wrong (and Right) About Evolutionary Psychology: https://evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/20160307_evopsych_ebook.pdf.
6. T. D. Wilson (2015), Hayes and Smith (2005).
7. See Ellis et al. (2017) for a review of adaptations to stressful environments in both humans and nonhumans. Ellis et al. (2012) applies this concept to risky adolescent behavior in humans.
8. For this and subsequent examples in this section, see Ellis et al. (2017) for a review.
9. Key books accessible to a general audience include Jablonka and Lamb (2006), Henrich (2015), Laland (2017), and Richerson and Boyd (2005).
10. Turchin (2015).
11. For a history of cultural anthropology see my TVOL interview with Robert A. Paul: https://evolution-institute.org/article/cultural-anthropology-and-cultural-evolution-tear-down-this-wall-a-conversation-with-robert-paul/.
12. I develop this melting pot theme in a TVOL essay, “The One Culture: Four New Books Indicate That the Barrier Between Science and the Humanities Is at Last Breaking Down”: https://evolution-institute.org/focus-article/the-one-culture/.
13. Wilson (2005a).
14. Chudek et al. (2012).
15. Gregory and Webster (1996).
1. I tell this story in my book The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time (Wilson 2011). Please visit the Evolution Institute website to learn about our many important projects: https://evolution-institute.org.
2. Campbell (1994).
3. See Wilson and Kirman (2016) and Wilson and Gowdy (2014) for discussions of evolutionary theory as a new paradigm for economics. The online magazine Evonomics.com features much of this material for a general audience.
4. Wilson (1988).
5. Swaab et al. (2014).
6. Boehm (2011).
7. http://freakonomics.com/2009/10/12/what-this-years-nobel-prize-in-economics-says-about-the-nobel-prize-in-economics/.
8. Hardin (1968).
9. Ostrom’s best-known book is Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Ostrom 1990). Her more recent contributions include Ostrom (2010a, 2010b, 2013).
10. Cox et al. (2010).
11. I tell this story in “Evonomics,” a chapter of The Neighborhood Project (Wilson 2011).
12. Wilson, Ostrom, and Cox (2013).
13. Csikszentmihalyi et al. (1993).
14. Wilson, Kauffman, and Purdy (2011).
15. Embry (2002) provides an excellent discussion of the Good Behavior Game and how it works. See also Wilson et al. (2014), Domitrovich et al. (2016), and references cited below.
16. Barrish et al. (1969).
17. Kellam et al. (2011, 2014).
18. Domitrovich et al. (2016). Visit https://paxis.org for recent updates and to see how the GBG can be implemented in schools in your region.
19. Sampson (2003).
20. Oakerson and Clifton (2011); discussed in Wilson, Ostrom, and Cox (2013).
21. Jacobs (1961), Putnam (2000).
22. My book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Wilson 2002) helped to initiate the study of religion from a modern evolutionary perspective. For a recent progress report, see Wilson et al. (2017) and Sosis et al. (2017).
23. I devote a full chapter of my book Darwin’s Cathedral (Wilson 2002) to Calvinism.
24. Cho (1981).
25. Jones (2012).
26. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pS2LthVoac.
27. This section is based on an Evolution Institute report, Doing Well by Doing Good (Wilson et al. 2015).
28. Pfeffer (1988).
29. Welbourne and Andrews (1996).
30. Jackall (2009).
31. See Haidt’s website: http://ethicalsystems.org.
32. Grant (2013).
33. Nuttall (2012).
34. https://www.bcorporation.net.
35. Chen and Kelly (2014).
1. Visit Coan’s Affective Neuroscience Laboratory website for an overview of his research and links to his academic publications: https://affectiveneuroscience.org.
2. Coan et al. (2006), Coan and Sbarra (2015), Beckes and Coan (2011), Beckes et al. (2013).
3. The most recent edition of Introduction to Behavioural Ecology is Davies, Krebs, and West (2012).
4. http://circleofwillispodcast.com/bonus-david-sloan-wilson-interviews-me.
5. Bhalla and Proffitt (1999).
6. See Gallace and Spence (2010) for an overview.
7. One of Skinner’s most influential articles had this title (Skinner 1981) and was written a few years before his death.
8. Trivers (1972), Burt and Trivers (2006), Daly and Wilson (1988).
9. Haig (1993, 2015).
10. The importance of alloparenting is emphasized by Sarah Hrdy (2011) in her book Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Human Understanding.
11. Ofek (2001).
12. Turchin (2015).
13. See Biglan (2015) for more on this topic.
14. Triple P website: http://www.triplep.net/glo-en/home/.
15. Prinz et al. (2009).
16. Hayes and Smith (2005), Hayes et al. (2011).
17. Grunbaum (1984). For an evaluation of modern long-term psychoanalytic methods, see Smit et al. (2012).
18. Muto et al. (2011).
19. Jeffcoat and Hayes (2012).
20. Wilson and Hayes (2018), Hayes et al. (2017), Wilson et al. (2014).
21. This scenario does not deny the fact that some forms of psychopathology are caused by organic dysfunctions.
22. Provine (1986) provides an interesting discussion of the adaptive landscapes in his biography of its originator, Sewall Wright. For a more recent treatment, see Svensson and Calsbeek (2012).
23. The concept of symbolic thought as a mechanism of inheritance is explored by Jablonka and Lamb (2006) and Wilson et al. (2014).
24. Pennebaker and Seagal (1999), Pennebaker (2010).
25. Walton and Cohen (2011).
26. The concept of a symbotype is significantly different from the concept of memes popularized by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins imagined memes as closely analogous to his conception of genes, which itself has turned out to be problematic. The concept of a symbotype is functionally analogous to a genotype and shares important properties such as combinatorial diversity (similar to genetic recombination), but that’s as far as the comparison goes. See Henrich et al. (2008) for an informative discussion of how the modern study of cultural evolution differs from the meme concept.
27. Polk et al. (2014).
28. If you would like to learn more about ACT and possibly work with an ACT trainer, visit the website of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science: https://contextualscience.org/acbs.
29. See chapter 16 of Wilson and Hayes (2018).
1. Ellis (2015).
2. Turchin (2015).
3. For a highly readable history of economics oriented toward TVOL, see Beinhocker (2006).
4. Mandeville ([1714] 1988).
5. Although Adam Smith is credited with inventing the metaphor of the invisible hand, he used it only three times in all of his writing and it does not represent the full corpus of his thought. See Wright (2005) for an informative critique.
6. Wilson and Gowdy (2014).
7. For a sample of academic articles on shame from a genetic and cultural evolutionary perspective, see Fessler (2004), Nichols (2015), Folger et al. (2014), Tanaka et al. (2015), and Sznycer et al. (2016).
8. Smail (2008).
9. Visit Peter Turchin’s website for more: http://peterturchin.com.
10. Turchin (2010, 2015, 2016).
11. While Dawkins (2006) interprets most religious beliefs as parasitic memes, most enduring religious beliefs and practices are better understood as for the good of the religious group (Wilson 2002). However, parasitic memes are still a theoretical possibility, and I interpret one short-lived religious movement, Millerism, which was a precursor to Seventh-day Adventism, as parasitic in Wilson (2011), chapter 18.
12. The Evolution Institute is making a special study of Norway as a case study of cultural evolution leading to a high quality of life: https://evolution-institute.org/projects/norway.
13. Acemoglu and Robinson (2012).
14. Pickett and Wilkinson (2009).
15. Fukuyama (2012).
16. O’Brien (2018).
17. This theme is developed in my This View of Life conversation with the systems engineer Guru Madhavan: https://evolution-institute.org/systems-engineering-as-cultural-group-selection-a-conversation-with-guru-madhavan/.
18. My TVOL essay with the Norwegian biologist Dag Hessen, “Blueprint for the Global Village,” explores this theme: https://evolution-institute.org/focus-article/blueprint-for-the-global-village/.
1. See Wilson and Kirman (2016) and Colander and Kupers (2014) on the special challenges of evolving complex systems.
2. Colander and Kupers (2014).
3. The concept of science as an evolutionary process has a long history in philosophical thought. In addition, science can be studied as a product of cultural evolution. For example, see Campbell (1974), Hull (1990), Shapin (1995), and McCauley (2011).
4. Wagner (1996).
5. Vasas et al. (2011).
6. Yasha Hartberg and I have explored the idea that written sacred texts were an important advance in cultural evolution and can be studied using the same techniques as biological inheritance systems: Hartberg and Wilson (2016).
7. Rother (2009).
8. For an excellent basic tutorial on complexity theory, see Gleick (1987).
9. My account of Toyota is based largely on Toyota Kata by the systems analyst Mike Rother (2009).
10. See Rother (2017) and Rother et al. (2017) for extensions beyond the domain of business.
11. Schaffer and Ashkenas (2007).
12. Hedges (2002), Solnit (2009).
13. Matta and Ashkenas (2003), Matta and Morgan (2011).
14. Senor and Singer (2009).
15. Hwang and Horowitt (2012).
1. Wagner (1996).
2. See my This View of Life conversation with the systems engineer Guru Madhavan on this theme: https://evolution-institute.org/systems-engineering-as-cultural-group-selection-a-conversation-with-guru-madhavan/.
3. https://www.dancingrabbit.org.
5. https://contextualscience.org.
6. In addition to my book Evolution for Everyone (Wilson 2007), written for a general audience, a sizable academic literature exists for the value of a TVOL education, including a special issue of the journal Evolution, Education, and Outreach (volume 4, issue 1) and an edited volume published by Oxford University Press (Geher et al. 2018). In addition, the EvoS (standing for Evolutionary Studies) consortium has its own website and online journal: http://evostudies.org.
7. https://evolution-institute.org.
8. https://www.prosocial.world.