Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The line of argumentation certainly suggests that when the benefits of
an altruistic act do not go to relatives, the benefits tend to disappear over
time. Additionally, it seems to indicate that acting against natural selec-
tion or one's genes decreases the number of such genes in the population
as well as the overall fitness of society.
Wilson phrases the issue this way:
Can the cultural evolution of higher ethical values gain a direction and momen-
tum of its own and completely replace genetic revolution? I think not. The genes
hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be con-
strained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is
a product of evolution. Human behavior—like the deepest capacities for emo-
tional response which drive and guide it—is the circuitous technique by which
human genetic material has been and will be kept intact.
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For Wilson, the genetic program is key to understanding human devel-
opment on all levels. Thus, while a culture may move in a particular
direction, eventually and ultimately, it will be conformed to the genetic
program, and group and kin selection will win out.
Wilson makes altruism the central theoretical problem of sociobiol-
ogy. This is so because in a “Darwinist sense the organism does not live
for itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other organisms;
it reproduces genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier.” This occurs
through natural selection, “a process whereby certain genes gain repre-
sentation in the following generations superior to that of other genes
located at the same chromosome positions.”
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Thus the organism is but
DNA's way of making more DNA, and the individual but the vehicle for
the genes.
In this context, the question is how can altruism—“self-destructive
behavior performed for the benefit of others”—possibly evolve through
natural selection.
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This behavior obviously reduces personal fitness and
would seem to lead to the loss of the gene or genes responsible for that
behavior. Wilson finds the answer to this question in kinship: “If the
genes causing the altruism are shared by two organisms because of
common descent, and if the altruistic act by one organism increases the
joint contribution of these genes to the next generation, the propensity
to altruism will spread through the gene pool. This occurs even though
the altruist makes less of a solitary contribution to the gene pool as the
price of its altruistic act.”
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