A Little History of Darwinian History

arwmlan hlstoryy Obviously In the last half century, biology has moved toward hlstory, and history has moved toward biology Sooner or later, they had to come together Darwm seemed to think so He said, at the end of his book on the Orlgrn of Species, “much light will be thrown on mankind and his hlstory ” (1859 573) But it took more than a hundred years It isn’t clear why the wait was so long (but see, e g, Freeman 1983 chapters 1-4, Haraway 1989. chapter 6, and especially Degler 1991). For whatever reason, around the middle of this century, it took a handful of men to bring Darwinian theory back to the study of behavior They asked two basic questions First. What IS the most important level of selection? Do mdlvlduals, or genes, or groups struggle to exist-and to reproduce? Their answer was that selection IS most effective at the mdlvldual level (Wllhams 1966; but see Wilson 1980, Dawkms 1982) Second Then what accounted for altru1s.m ~ Why did one mdlvldual ever go out of its way to help another? One answer was that mdlvlduals could reproduce both directly and through their famlhes-through km who shared their genes (Hamilton 1964) Another was, they might help m order to get helped back (Tnvers 1971, Axelrod and Hamilton 1981). Answers to those questions started a revolution m the stud