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Title details for SuperCooperators by Martin Nowak - Available

SuperCooperators

Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed

by Martin Nowak
Roger Highfield
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EVOLUTION IS OFTEN PRESENTED AS A STRICTLY COMPETITIVE ENDEAVOR. This point of view has had serious implications for the way we see the mechanics of both science and culture. But scientists have long wondered how societies could have evolved without some measure of cooperation. And if there was cooperation involved, how could it have arisen from nature "red in tooth and claw"?
Martin Nowak, one of the world's experts on evolution and game theory, working here with bestselling science writer Roger Highfield, turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. He offers a new explanation for the origin of life and a new theory for the origins of language, biology's second greatest information revolution after the emergence of genes. SuperCooperators also brings to light his game-changing work on disease. Cancer is fundamentally a failure of the body's cells to cooperate, Nowak has discovered, but organs are cleverly designed to foster cooperation, and he explains how this new understanding can be used in novel cancer treatments.
Nowak and Highfield examine the phenomena of reciprocity, reputation, and reward, explaining how selfless behavior arises naturally from competition; how forgiveness, generosity, and kindness have a mathematical rationale; how companies can be better designed to promote cooperation; and how there is remarkable overlap between the recipe for cooperation that arises from quantitative analysis and the codes of conduct seen in major religions, such as the Golden Rule.
In his first book written for a wide audience, this hugely influential scientist explains his cutting-edge research into the mysteries of cooperation, from the rise of multicellular life to Good Samaritans. With wit and clarity, Nowak and Highfield make the case that cooperation, not competition, is the defining human trait. SuperCooperators will expand our understanding of evolution and provoke debate for years to come.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 22, 2011

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781439110171

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781439110171
      • File size: 2293 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      December 15, 2010

      With New Scientist editor Highfield (The Science of Harry Potter, 2003, etc.), Nowak (Biology and Mathematics/Harvard Univ.; Evolutionary Dynamics, 2006, etc.) presents a panoramic view of the role of cooperation in the evolution.

      Given the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection, what are we to make of cooperation and altruism? Natural selection, in a well-mixed population, favors the selfish, the cheater, the deceiver. As the author writes in this sweeping survey, cooperation has been with us since the dawn of man—indeed, perhaps before the dawn, in the prelife, when two complementary molecular sequences possibly catalyzed reactions. Nowak is a mathematical biologist, and his enthusiasm for numbers is extremely useful in his discussions of evolutionary theory. However, thankfully for the mathematically disinclined, there is little hard math here. What natural selection needs, writes the author, are mechanisms to encourage cooperation, to give it a competitive edge. The author delineates five such mechanisms: direct reciprocity (tit for tat), indirect reciprocity (influence of reputation), spatial selection, group selection (often manifested in tribal wars) and kin selection (often manifested in nepotism). All the mechanisms find their rationale when tried against cost-benefit analysis, wherein the combined cost must be less than the shared benefit. Nowak also brings many other theoretical models to bear—game theory, spatial games, phylogenetics, the haplodiploidy hypothesis and others—and he investigates them in a slightly formal voice that is unencumbered by equations, graphs or charts.

      A fleshed-out, persuasive chronicle of the bright side—collective enterprise—of the evolutionary road.

      (COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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