PURPOSE
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Scribes,
their numbers decimated by the Black Death, commanded astronomically
high prices, while paper was relatively cheap, when a goldsmith
from Mainz, Germany developed a technique for printing using
movable type. The invention, credited to Johann Gutenberg, revolutionized
the spread of knowledge. Within twenty-five years of the production
of the first book in 1457, the new technology had spread throughout
Europe. Printing represented a great leap forward in imagination
and was one of the most important events in the cultural history
of the world.
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The
pace of discovery and the movement of events at the dawn of the twenty-first
century make it at once difficult and essential to occasionally find
the time to take a long look at the big picture. Did we get where
we are, after some three billion years of life on earth, by happenstance?
Or is there evidence of purpose in the realms of animate matter and,
indeed, of human history? Is purpose a deep biological or even cosmological
fact or just a human invention — a reed of consolation in a pointless
universe? On a Caribbean island far from the bustle of their day jobs
in the United States and the United Kingdom, ten people — natural
scientists, social scientists, a writer, a philosopher, and a theologian
— gather to consider the subject of purpose in relation to biological
evolution, cultural evolution, and human psychology — and to ponder
the meaning of the apparent arrow of life moving toward greater and
greater complexity. Questions to be explored include the probability
of directionality in the realm of animate matter, specifically, the
likelihood of the evolution of a human intelligence, that is, an intelligence
particularly suited to generating space probes and poems, and in the
realm of technology, of art, and of social institutions. Was globalization
itself nearly inexorable? Was the evolution of certain political values,
such as liberal democracy, and evolution toward a universalistic morality
— i.e., the conviction that all human beings deserve equal moral treatment
— almost bound to occur given certain other trends in the unfolding
world being shaped by the minds of men and women? A matter of equal
import involves the possibility that natural selection may have favored
purposive behavior. Is positive emotion tied to anti-entropic states?
Is negative emotion intrinsic to zero-sum games? What are the emotional
and health consequences of having purpose? Of lacking it? And finally,
assuming there is a probabilistic directionality in biological and/or
cultural evolution, what moral, spiritual, and/or theological inferences
might be drawn? Does directionality constitute progress? Is it suggestive
of higher purpose? Can seeing this directionality inspire personal
spiritual progress independent of inferences drawn about higher purpose?
Is scientific advance ultimately headed toward some “Point Omega”
where human beings can aspire to omniscience and omnipotence? If so,
is the process sacred? The probe for answers in the conversation in
Nassau takes place under the aegis of the John Templeton Foundation.

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To
Arab astronomers, who brought a sophisticated mixture of Greek
and Indian science to the medieval West, we owe our system of
numbers and the use of the decimal in calculations. With the fall
of Toledo, all the treasures of the great Arab libraries in Spain
became accessible to Christian Europe. The Arab astrolabe, invented
in the ninth century and pictured here in the upper right, was
used for the next seven centuries to show where the stars would
be at any time in the year. |
CHAIRS
 |
Columbus
sailed to the New World in a ship with a lanteen rig and sternpost
rudder. The lanteen permitted tacking through the varying offshore
winds until the square sail could be hoisted, and the rudder
gave masters the necessary longitudinal control over big ships.
These innovations fostered trade and exploration by making transoceanic
voyages possible in all weathers.
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Martin
E. P. Seligman, the Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor
of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is a world-renowned
authority on helping people live up to their potential. Early in his
career, the fundamental contributions he made to understanding human
helplessness by extrapolating from well-controlled animal experiments
struck at the heart of behavioristic theories of learning. He went
on to demonstrate that changing explanatory style — the way in which
people explain bad events to themselves — could not only alleviate
depression but often prevent it. His own research and that of others
supported his bold hypothesis that optimism could be learned. But
he also has looked carefully at the “deepest” aspects of human personality,
which he finds almost always resistant to change and has termed, using
Freud’s word die Seele, “the soul.” A 1964 summa cum laude
graduate of Princeton University, where he majored in philosophy,
Dr. Seligman earned his Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1967. He spent three years as an assistant professor at Cornell
before returning to Penn in 1970. He was named a full professor in
1976, the year he won the Early Career Award of the American Psychological
Association (APA) for distinguished scientific contributions. Over
the past thirty years, he has received support for his research from
the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of
Aging, the National Science Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation,
and the MacArthur Foundation. Named by the APA in 1992 as one of the
top ten contemporary psychologists in the world, he was elected president
of the APA four years later by the largest vote in the organization’s
recent history. Founding co-editor-in-chief of Treatment, the
APA’s electronic journal, Dr. Seligman has spent many years trying
to build bridges between clinical and experimental psychologists.
He also is one of the few academic psychologists to make his work
accessible to the general public. Since 1984 he has served as chairman
of the scientific advisory board of Foresight, Inc., a testing company
that predicts success in various walks of life. His many honors include,
in addition to a second APA Award for distinguished scientific contribution,
the APA’s William James Fellow Award, the Laurel Award of the American
Association for Applied Psychology and Prevention, the Lifetime Achievement
Award of the Society for Research in Psychopathology, the James McKeen
Cattell Fellow Award of the American Psychology Association, and the
Distinguished Scientific/Professional Contribution Award of the Pennsylvania
Psychological Association. Currently Honorary Professor of Psychology
at the University of Wales, Cardiff, Dr. Seligman, a member of both
Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, holds honorary degrees from Uppsala University
in Sweden and the Massachusetts College of Professional Psychology.
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, the APA, the Behavioral Research and Therapy Society, the
Society of Behavioral Medicine, the American Psychological Society,
and the Pennsylvania Psychological Association. The author of some
150 research papers, he also has written fifteen books, several of
which have been translated into more than a dozen languages. His latest
volume, The Optimistic Child (with Karen Reivich, Lisa Jaycox,
and Jane Gillham), published in 1995 by Houghton Mifflin, presents
a program for building lifelong resilience. It represents, as does
much of his work, a return to the roots of psychology by complementing
a professional focus on repairing damage with professional attention
to ways of nurturing a sense of purpose, courage, honesty, altruism,
and hope.
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“Neither
party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration,
which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the
cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the
conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph,
and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the
same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each evokes His aid
against the other. It may seem strange that men should dare
to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we
be judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
—Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) Abraham Lincoln
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In
his latest book, award-winning author Robert
Wright analyzes a force he calls the “non-zero sum dynamic.”
He believes it has shaped both human history and organic evolution.
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, published last month by Pantheon
Books, examines how homo sapiens have arrived at where we are today
and what the journey tells us about where we are headed next. The
new study argues that both biological and cultural evolution evince
directionality and suggests that this directionality is at least tentative
evidence of higher purpose. In an earlier work, Mr. Wright sought
to explain a range of human attitudes and emotions, from friendship
to jealousy, in terms of the logic of Darwinian natural selection.
The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life
was named by the New York Times Book Review as one of eleven
“Editor’s Choice” books for 1994 and has been published in nine languages.
The author, a 1979 magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate
of Princeton University, is a contributing editor of Time, Slate,
and The New Republic. He began his journalistic career as a
reporter for The Daily Register in Red Bank, New Jersey, then
became an associate editor of The Wilson Quarterly, an associate
editor then senior editor of The Sciences, editor of New Republic
Books, an imprint of Basic Books, and, from 1989 to 1995, senior editor
at The New Republic. He won the National Magazine Award for
Essay and Criticism in 1985 and the New York Press Club Award for
Feature Writing in 1996. Mr. Wright’s first book, Three Scientists
and Their Gods (1988), was a finalist for the National Book Critics
Circle Award.
The
deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows, for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
—Ulysses
Alfred Lord Tennyson
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PARTICIPANTS
One
of the world’s leading authorities on the psychology of creativity,
Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi is the C.
S. and D. J. Davidson Professor of Psychology at the Peter F. Drucker
Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University and
director of the school’s Quality of Life Research Center. He is also
emeritus professor of human development at the University of Chicago,
where he chaired the department of psychology. His life’s work has
been to study what makes people truly happy. Drawing upon years of
systematic research, he invented the concept of “flow” as a metaphorical
description of the rare mental state associated with feelings of optimal
satisfaction and fulfillment. His analysis of the internal and external
conditions giving rise to “flow” show that it is almost always linked
to circumstances of high challenge when personal skills are used to
the utmost. The Hungarian-born social scientist, a graduate of the
classical gymnasium, “Torquato Tasso,” in Rome, completed his undergraduate
studies at the University of Chicago and earned a Ph.D. in psychology
there in 1965. After teaching in the department of sociology and anthropology
at Lake Forest College, where he rose from instructor to associate
professor, he returned to Chicago in 1970 and was appointed a full
professor in 1982, a position he held until his retirement last year.
He has been a visiting professor at the University of Waterloo in
Ontario, Canada, the University of Illinois, the University of Milan,
the University of Alberta, Escola Paulista de Medecina in São Paulo,
Brazil, Duquesne University, the University of Maine, the University
of Jyvaskyla in Finland, and the British Psychological Society. His
research has been supported by the United States Public Health Service,
the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Sloan Foundation, the W. T. Grant Foundation,
the Hewlett Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. A former resident
scholar at the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, resident fellow at
the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo
Alto, and senior Fulbright Fellow in Brazil and New Zealand, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi
holds an honorary doctor of science degree from Lake Forest College.
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Psychological Society, the National Academy of Education, and the
National Academy of Leisure Studies and a foreign member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. Serving on the editorial boards of numerous professional
journals, he has been a consultant to business, government organizations,
educational associations, and cultural institutions and given invited
lectures throughout the world. In addition to the hugely influential
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), which was
translated into fifteen languages, he is the author of thirteen other
books and some 185 research articles. His latest volume, Finding
Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, was published
in 1997 by Basic Books.
Francis
Fukuyama is the Omar L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public
Policy at the Institute of Public Policy at George Mason University
and director of the Institute’s International Commerce and Policy
Program. A consultant to the RAND Corporation, he is widely known
for his writing on issues relating to democratization and international
political economy. In recent years, he has focused particularly on
the role of culture in modern economic life. His earlier work provided
a comprehensive analysis of Soviet foreign policy in developing nations.
Dr. Fukuyama is a graduate of Cornell, where he majored in classics,
and of Harvard, where he earned a Ph.D. in political science in 1981.
He began his career as a member of RAND’s political science department,
served on the policy planning staff of the U. S. Department of State,
and subsequently returned to RAND as a senior social scientist before
joining the George Mason faculty in 1996. He also has directed various
projects related to telecommunications, the new sciences, and the
biological and information revolutions as a fellow of the Foreign
Policy Institute of The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced
International Studies. The winner of the Medal of the Presidency of
the Italian Republic and the Excellence 2000 Award United States Pan
Asian-American Chamber of Commerce, he holds an honorary doctorate
from Connecticut College. Dr. Fukuyama is a member of the advisory
board of National Interest and of the editorial board of the Journal
of Democracy. In addition to some sixty articles and book chapters,
he is the author of ten monographs and books. The End of History
and the Last Man (1992), an exploration of the evolution of political
institutions in the direction of modern liberal democracy, has been
published in twenty-three foreign languages and won the Premio
Capri International Award for the Italian edition and a Los
Angeles Times Book Critics Award. His most recent study, The
Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order,
was published last year by the Free Press. An analysis of the measurable
breakdown of long-accepted norms of behavior, which Dr. Fukuyama links
to the weakening of social bonds and common values, it goes on to
posit a deeply innate human capacity to generate moral rules, which
the author sees as the basis of a new stability.
One of the world’s most respected evolutionary biologists,
William D. Hamilton is the author
of some sixty research papers that have permanently changed the landscape
of ideas and interpretation surrounding a wide range of biological
phenomena. He has made notable contributions to the evolutionary theory
of senescence and, more generally, to the analysis of life-history
evolution. His concept of the selfish herd provided a basis for understanding
why unrelated animals would choose to live in groups, and a series
of influential theoretical and empirical studies demonstrated how
the co-evolution of hosts and parasites might change aspects of sexual
reproduction and how cooperation could evolve among unrelated organisms.
His findings have not only opened up new areas of inquiry but as pioneering
applications of the “gene’s-eye point of view,” they have had a powerful
impact on investigations of many problems in evolutionary genetics
that go far beyond the boundaries of his own research interests. Trained
in genetics at Cambridge University, where he studied at St. John’s
College, Dr. Hamilton received his Ph.D. in zoology from University
College, London in 1968. The next year he spent nine months in Brazil
with the Royal Society and Royal Geographic Society Xavantina-Cachimbo
Expedition. He was a lecturer in zoology at Imperial College, London
for thirteen years and subsequently Museum Professor of Evolutionary
Biology in the Museum of Zoology and Biological Sciences at the University
of Michigan for six years. In 1984, he was named Royal Society Research
Professor at Oxford University, where he is also a professorial fellow
at New College. Dr. Hamilton has been the Leverhulme Visiting Professor
at the University of São Paulo and the Visiting Agassiz Professor
at Harvard University. He served as the first president of Human Behaviour
and Evolution Society. He is an associate editor of Ethology and
Sociobiology, Revista Brasileria de Genetica, and of the Royal
Society B publications and also serves on the editorial boards of
Insects Sociaux and of Ethology, Ecology, Evolution.
In addition to an honorary doctor of science degree from the University
of Guelph, his many other awards include: the Scientific Medal of
the Zoological Society of London (1978), the Newcomb Cleveland Prize
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1982),
the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society of London (1988), the Scientific
Medal of the Linnean Society (1989), the Frink Medal of the Zoological
Society of London (1991), the Distinguished Animal Behaviorist Award
of the Animal Behaviour Society (1991), the Lecture and Prize of the
Albert Wander Foundation and the University of Bern (1992), the Crafoord
Prize and Medal of the Academy of Sciences (1993), the Kyoto Prize
(1993), the Fyssen Prize (1996), Brazil’s National Order of Merit
(1998), and the Sewall Right Award of the American Society of Naturalists
(1998). Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1980, Dr. Hamilton
is also an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, a member of the Royal Society of Uppsala, a corresponding
member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the
Academy of Finland, and a foreign member of the American Philosophical
Society.
John F. Haught,
a theologian well-known for his teaching and writing in the area of
science and religion, is the Landegger Distinguished Professor at
Georgetown University, where he has been a member of the theology
faculty for the past thirty years. A graduate of St. Mary’s University,
he earned his Ph.D. in theology at The Catholic University of America
in 1970. Dr. Haught formerly served as chair of the Georgetown theology
department and is the founding director of its Center for the Study
of Science and Religion. The author of more than fifty articles and
book chapters, he has published ten books, including The Promise
of Nature: Ecology and Cosmic Purpose (1993) and Science and
Religion: From Conflict to Conservation (1995). His latest volume,
God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview Press,
1999) defines purpose “as a much wider notion than design” and argues
that the debate between evolutionists and creationists is fundamentally
misdirected in that both sides persist in focusing upon an explanation
of the design and order in living beings and the universe. Dr. Haught
suggests that what is lacking in both these competing ideologies is
an adequate discussion of novelty, a necessary component of evolution
and a central theme in theological understanding of divine creativity.
He argues that Darwin’s vision of life, instead of being hostile to
religion — as scientific skeptics and many believers have thought
it to be — actually provides a fertile setting for mature reflection
on ideas about God and the meaning of creation. Dr. Haught is the
editor of a new book of essays, Science and Religion in Quest of
Cosmic Purpose, which will be published by Georgetown University
Press in the spring.
The anthropologist Allen
Johnson is an expert on cultural and political ecology
and widely respected for his work in the field of psychological anthropology
and his studies of native South American and Latin American communities.
A graduate of the University of California/Berkeley, he received a
Ph.D. in anthropology from Stanford in 1968 and a second doctorate
in psychoanalysis from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute
in 1992. Dr. Johnson has conducted field work in Oaxaca, Mexico, Ceara,
Brazil, and the Peruvian Amazon. After beginning his teaching career
at Columbia University, he moved on to the University of California/Los
Angeles in 1975. Promoted to full professor of anthropology in 1980,
he was appointed professor of anthropology and psychiatry in 1988.
Dr. Johnson directed a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
training program in social anthropology at Columbia and one in behavioral
anthropology at UCLA. A former chair of UCLA’s anthropology department,
he is currently chair of the university’s Latin American Studies Program.
His research has been supported by grants from the National Science
Foundation, Agricultural Development Council, and NIMH. Dr. Johnson
has served as a member-at-large of the Executive Committee of Anthropology
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as
a member of the board of directors of the Society for Psychological
Anthropology. In 1998, he delivered the Robert J. Stroller Foundation
Memorial Lecture. The author of some three dozen research articles,
he also has published seven books. His 1996 study (with Douglass Price-Williams),
Oedipus Ubiquitous: The Family Complex in World Folk Literature
(1996) won the Society for Psychological Anthropology’s L. Bryce Boyer
Prize for the outstanding publication in psychoanalytic anthropology.
Later this year, Stanford University Press will bring out the second
edition of The Evolution of Human Societies, a highly-praised
book Dr. Johnson wrote in 1987 with Timothy Earle, as well as his
latest monograph, Families of the Forest: A Psychoecological Study
of the Matsigenka of the Peruvian Amazon.
Robert Nozick,
the Pellegrino University Professor at Harvard University and past
chair of the Harvard philosophy department, is a philosopher of remarkably
varied interests. He has made notable contributions to both political
philosophy and epistemology. His first and perhaps most influential
book, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), is a powerful and witty
statement of libertarianism. He presents an image of a fully voluntary
society in which people cooperate only on terms that violate no one’s
natural rights. Dr. Nozick also has had a major impact on Western
public discourse through his analysis of knowledge, with its accompanying
response to skepticism, as well as through his account of personal
identity and his work related to decision theory and the theory of
rationality. Throughout his work, he emphasizes the role of evolution
in the construction of human capacities and institutions. Dr. Nozick
is a graduate of Columbia College, where he was elected to Phi Beta
Kappa, and of Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy
in 1963. He then studied at Oxford on a Fulbright Scholarship and
returned to teach at Princeton for a year before joining the Harvard
faculty as an assistant professor. He went on to The Rockefeller University
as an associate professor in 1967, then returned to Harvard as a full
professor in 1969. He was named Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of
Philosophy in 1985 and awarded his present chair in 1998. Dr. Nozick
has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Van Leer Jerusalem
Foundation. In 1983, he was awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters
degree from Knox College, and in 1998, he received a presidential
citation from the American Psychological Association. Cultural advisor
to the United States Delegation to the UNESCO Conference on World
Cultural Policy in 1982, he was Christensen Visiting Fellow at St.
Catherine’s College, Oxford in the spring of 1997 and president of
the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Society in 1997-98.
Dr. Nozick is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, a senior fellow of
the Society of Fellows of Harvard University, and a member of the
Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress. For the past nine
years, he has been general editor of Readings in Philosophy,
a series of multi-volume sets of articles on philosophical subjects.
His 1981 book, Philosophical Explanations, received the Ralph
Waldo Emerson Prize of Phi Beta Kappa. He is also the author of The
Examined Life (1989), The Normative Theory of Individual Choice
(1990), The Nature of Rationality (1993), and Socratic Puzzles
(1997). A revision of the six John Locke Lectures that he delivered
at Oxford in 1997 will be published as The Structure of the Objective
World by Harvard University Press next year.
Internationally known for his research and writings
on ancient Maya civilization, Jeremy Arac
Sabloff is The Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Penn’s University Museum
Term Professor of Anthropology. He also serves as curator of Mesoamerican
archaeology at the Museum. Dr. Sabloff has done field research in
both Mexico and Guatemala and, from 1983 to 1988, directed a National
Science Foundation-funded project that examined the growth of urban
settlement at the pre-Columbian Maya city of Sayil in the Yucatan.
After undergraduate studies at Penn, where he was awarded his baccalaureate
degree magna cum laude with honors in anthropology and elected
to Phi Beta Kappa, he earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard
in 1969 and began his teaching and curatorial career there as an assistant
professor of anthropology and assistant curator of Middle American
archaeology at the university’s Peabody Museum. Promoted to associate
professor and associate curator in 1974, he left two years later to
become curator of anthropology at the Utah Museum of Natural History
and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Utah.
In 1978, he accepted a professorship of anthropology at the University
of New Mexico, a position he held until being named University Professor
of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. He returned
to Penn six years ago. Dr. Sabloff has been an overseas-visiting fellow
at St. John’s College, Cambridge, a visiting fellow in the department
of archaeology at Cambridge University, and a senior fellow in pre-Columbian
studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington. Currently chair of the Smithsonian
Council of the Smithsonian Institution and president of the Louis
J. Kolb Foundation, he is a past president of the Society for American
Archaeology and a past chair of the Section on Anthropology of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is
a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical
Society, as well as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
AAAS, Royal Anthropological Institute, and Society of Antiquaries
of London. A former editor of American Antiquity, he serves
on the editorial boards of the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, Latin American Antiquity, the Journal of Anthropological
Research, and Archaeology Magazine. In addition to writing
some eighty scholarly articles and book chapters, Dr. Sabloff is the
editor of eleven books and the author or co-author of twelve, including
Excavations at Seibal; Ceramics (1975), The Cities of Ancient
Mexico (1989 and 1997), and The New Archaeology and the Ancient
Maya (1990). His A History of American Archaeology (with
Gordon R. Willey), now in its third edition, has become a standard
text in its field.
David Sloan Wilson
has been described as one of the most creative theoreticians in evolutionary
studies. His recent book (with Elliott Sober), Unto Others: The
Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (Harvard University
Press, 1998), is a radical revision of the theory of altruism that
rejects the idea that natural selection must operate directly only
on individuals. Through a rigorous technical analysis of both biological
and epistemological questions, he shows that species may evolve altruistic
behavior provided that the frequency of altruistic types within groups
has an effect on the contribution of the group as a whole to the next
generation of the species. Dr. Wilson is a professor of biological
sciences at the State University of New York/Binghamton. A magna
cum laude graduate of the University of Rochester, he earned his
Ph.D. in zoology at Michigan State University in 1975. He did further
research at Harvard, the University of Washington, and the University
of the Witwatersrand in South Africa before joining the staff of South
Africa’s National Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences as
a senior research officer in 1976. He moved on the next year to the
University of California/Davis and then back to Michigan State as
assistant professor of zoology. Promoted to associate professor in
1982, he joined the Binghamton faculty six years later. Dr. Wilson
is a former Guggenheim Fellow and also has received research support
from the National Science Foundation, the United States Department
of Energy, and the John Templeton Foundation. Currently serving on
the editorial board of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, he
previously served as vice president of the American Society of Naturalists.
In addition to Unto Others, he is the author of The Natural Selection
of Populations and Communities (1980) and more than one hundred
research articles published in philosophy, psychology, and anthropology
as well as biology and general science journals.
Many
things, having full reference
To one consent, may work contrariously;
As many arrows, loosed several ways,
Fly to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial’s center;
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat.
—
King Henry V
William Shakespeare
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The
small perch-like fish found in Lake Victoria are known as cichlids
but called furu, a name that means “wanderer,” by the East African
people of the Mwanza Gulf. They are a group of closely-related
species that descended, during a relatively recent past, from
a common ancestor. As the cichlids evolve, they develop a diversity
of shapes, colors, and behavior patterns. To the delight of
scientists, new species are literally appearing, changing, and
disappearing before their very eyes. Cichlid radiations — the
production of many species from a small number of ancestral
species — are among the most spectacular in the world and can
be observed at different stages of evolution as living organisms.
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The
Humble Approach Initiative
Contact Mary ann Meyers, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
A
Program of the John Templeton Foundation
300 Conshohocken State Road, Suite 500
West Conshohocken, PA 19428
610.941.2828 Fax 610.825.1730
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