In an earlier article titled What is Life?, I took the reader through a reasoning process to finally arrive at the conclusion that, contrary to general expectation, finding a definition of life is not an overwhelmingly difficult problem at all because life  is a remarkably simple concept – independent spontaneous cooperation.
I think that finding a definition has been seen as difficult because those considering it have confused the definition with the underlying significance of life, which some might call life’s purpose, when the two are almost separate questions.
This confusion, this perception that life is just too hard to explain, has reduced our most inspiring thinkers to the status of mere mortals.

I’ve been putting the case for some months now, that evolutionary biology is in a deplorable state due to an uncritical acceptance of the unrealistic assumptions that lie at the heart of selfish gene theory, by those who are directing current research. (See also Gerhard Adam’s articles on Hamilton’s Rule, Selfish Gene Theory, and Biology.) Contributing biologists have responded by telling me that my fears are groundless, that biology has moved on, that the influence of selfish gene theory has waned, that I should concentrate on the current literature and not dwell on the past. So I went to the trouble of checking out the Oxford University Zoology Department’s very good selection of papers available online, that deal with current research in this area.

The Struggle for Existence was the title Charles Darwin gave to Chapter Three of On The Origin of Species, and he went to some trouble to explain exactly what he meant by this struggle. Throughout the chapter we find:

“I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.”

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“there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence,”

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No. 1 “Evolution is the external and visible manifestation of the differential survival of alternative replicators.”

This is my all-time favourite, the Dawkins Fallacy, the definition of evolution Richard Dawkins gave in The Extended Phenotype p.82. The fallacy it contains is so obvious I’m amazed that his colleagues have not drawn his attention to it. The survival of replicators is a result of evolution, an outcome, and therefore cannot be the definition of evolution. If we said that fire is the visible manifestation of the production of ash, the statement would be true but meaningless. It would not be a definition of fire and it would tell us nothing about fire, just as Dawkins’ definition tells us nothing about evolution.

David Sloan Wilson is doing a great job in his blog at The Huffington Post, exposing the contradictions that lie at the heart of selfish gene theory.

He’s run a series of articles under the umbrella title of Truth and Reconciliation for Group Selection, singling out Richard Dawkins as a target for some pretty heavy broadsides. Like this; “Richard has become unaccountable, in part by becoming a public icon. That disqualifies him as a spokesperson for science.” And this; “when it comes to semantic confusion, you can't beat selfish gene theory.”

It just makes me feel warm and tingly all over.

Altruism has had a lot of bad press in recent times. It’s been used, abused, manipulated and misunderstood. Let’s look at some background.

It all began with a paper submitted by WD Hamilton in 1964 in which he put forward a view of altruism that was packaged into a concept called inclusive fitness. Inclusive fitness became the bedrock of selfish gene theory, because it was assumed that it solved “the problem” of altruism, a problem that had to be solved for evolution-as-selfishness to get off the ground. But it led to unforeseen problems of its own.

I recently came across a radio lecture given by Dr Lee Alan Dugatkin on 7.6.2007, titled "Is Goodness Natural?" It deserves comment. (An article on the same subject but with some differences in text was published at Huffington Post.)

The talk began well with some historical background describing the attempts by Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Peter Kropotkin and W. D. Hamilton to explain the origin of goodness, (in the sense of being nice to one another,) in light of evolutionary theory. He concluded that the first three had failed to adequately explain goodness, (Kropotkin’s great work “Ethics” was obviously overlooked) but that Hamilton had solved the dilemma with a “simple but elegant mathematical equation.”

In works on evolution written by a certain class of biologist we can often see “for the good of the species” references derided in no uncertain terms. Comments such as “fuzzy thinking”, “they got it wrong” and so on have become so habitual that they almost go unnoticed. But is the “for the good of the species” idea really all that bad? It might well be that some comments and discussions are indeed fuzzy, in that they might be poorly thought out or presented. But here’s a discussion from Robert Ardrey’s The Social Contract to consider. Ardrey described the communication between starlings as an element in their defence against peregrine falcons, the falcons being hindered in their attacks by the speed for which they are famous.

I recently saw W D Hamilton’s 1970 paper “Geometry for the Selfish Herd” described as “a classic in its own right.” As a long-time bibliophile this made it irresistible, but I was also intrigued by the incongruity of “selfish herd” and of linking geometry to animals. I have to report that the paper certainly is a classic, for all the wrong reasons, but it contains a valuable message.

The introduction to the paper began with:
This paper presents an antithesis to the view that gregarious behaviour is evolved through benefits to the population or species. Following Galton (1871) and Williams (1964) gregarious behaviour is considered as a form of cover-seeking in which each animal tries to reduce its chance of being caught by a predator.