Genesis : the deep origin of societies / Edward O. Wilson ; illustrated by Debby Cotter Kaspari.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Edward O., author.

Contributor:

Kaspari, Debby Cotter, illustrator.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animal behavior.

Behavior evolution.

Behavior genetics.

Physical Description:

153 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Deep origin of societies

Place of Publication:

New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Summary:

Studying animal behavior to understand human behavior.

"For eons, humanity's greatest minds--philosophers, theologians, and scientists--have lacked confirmable answers to the questions that define and explain the meaning of human existence: what we are and what created us. In [this book], Edward O. Wilson, examining evolutionary history further back than he has ever done before, delivers a revelatory account of the deep origins of society. Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Wilson argues that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to appreciate the long, complicated evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least seventeen--among them the naked African mole rat and sponge-dwelling shrimp--have developed advanced societies based on similar levels of altruism and cooperation found among humans. Just as Darwin, in his 1871 Descent of Man, proposed humanity's origins through the study of apes and human behavior, Wilson here synthesizes the most updated research in evolutionary science to offer a pithy yet path-breaking work of evolutionary theory. In Genesis, Wilson eloquently braids twenty-first-century scientific research with the lyrical biological and humanistic observations for which he is known and admired."--Dust jacket.

Contents:

The search for genesis

The great transitions of evolution

The great transitions dilemma and how it was solved

Tracking social evolution through the ages

The final steps to eusociality

Group selection

The human story.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [127]-140) and index.

ISBN:

9781631495540

1631495542

OCLC:

1037807605