Cooperation and Its Evolution

Essays from a range of disciplinary perspectives show the central role that cooperation plays in structuring our world.

This collection reports on the latest research on an increasingly pivotal issue for evolutionary biology: cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and utilize research tools that range from empirical survey to conceptual modeling, reflecting the rich diversity of work in the field. They explore a wide taxonomic range, concentrating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially, humans.

Part I (Agents and Environments) investigates the connections of social cooperation in social organizations to the conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable, focusing on the interactions of agent, population, and environment. Part II (Agents and Mechanisms) focuses on how proximate mechanisms emerge and operate in the evolutionary process and how they shape evolutionary trajectories. Throughout the book, certain themes emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questions regarding cooperation in evolutionary biology: the generation and division of the profits of cooperation; transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from gene to organism; and the human cooperation explosion that makes our own social behavior particularly puzzling from an evolutionary perspective.

Richard Joyce is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington and author of The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2006) and The Myth of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Brett Calcott is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ASU/SFI Center for Complex Biosocial Systems in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University and coeditor (with Kim Sterelny) of The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (MIT Press, 2011).

Ben Fraser is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy Program at Australian National University.

Kim Sterelny is Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University and Victoria University of Wellington. His books include Language and Reality (with Michael Devitt; second edition, MIT Press).

Richard Joyce is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington and author of The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2006) and The Myth of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Brett Calcott is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ASU/SFI Center for Complex Biosocial Systems in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University and coeditor (with Kim Sterelny) of The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (MIT Press, 2011).

Ben Fraser is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy Program at Australian National University.

Don Ross is Professor of Economics and Dean of Commerce at the University of Cape Town, and Research Fellow in the Center for Economic Analysis of Risk at Georgia State University. He is the author of Economic Theory and Cognitive Science: Microexplanation (MIT Press, 2005), companion volume to Midbrain Mutiny.

David C. Krakauer is Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Kim Sterelny is Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University and Victoria University of Wellington. His books include Language and Reality (with Michael Devitt; second edition, MIT Press).

Herbert Gintis is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Insitute.

Ben Fraser is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy Program at Australian National University.

Brett Calcott is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the ASU/SFI Center for Complex Biosocial Systems in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University and coeditor (with Kim Sterelny) of The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited (MIT Press, 2011).

Daniel Kelly is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University.

Richard Joyce is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington and author of The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2006) and The Myth of Morality (Cambridge University Press, 2001).