Selection of and in groups

Eric Michael Johnson has an excellent round-up of and commentary upon recent debates about “group selection” (also, a decent primer on the basics). If there is one major issue I might take with the narrative outlined, it is the idea that E. O. Wilson has made a recent about-face in regards to group selection, going from a skeptic to a believer. In Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate Ullica Segerstrale pointed out that this was obviously not the case even in Wilson’s grand book Sociobiology. If you don’t accept this, David Sloan Wilson seems to implicitly confirm Segerstrale’s position in his semi-autobiographical book Evolution for Everyone. Finally, I’ve heard it from acquaintances at Harvard that it was an open secret that E. O. Wilson was skeptical of the “Hamiltonian orthodoxy” ascendant in evolutionary biology and ecology. The controversy over the notorious paper, The evolution of eusociality, was years in the making. From what I gather many of Wilson’s colleagues at Harvard were skeptical that he comprehended the depths of the mathematics which he promoted to support his more intuitive empirically informed skepticism of the power of inclusive fitness. It isn’t an unheard of sin …