Biologist Opposes Kin Selection in Ground-breaking Book
Anthony Caswell joins a vocal minority of scientists that disagree with kin selection, an evolutionary theory long contested among biologists and evolutionists.
A biologist’s book will shake up a long-held belief on a long controversial topic among evolutionary biologists and other experts.
Kin selection or the inclusive fitness theory remains to be a controversial topic among evolutionary biologists, naturalists, researchers, and other experts. An argument would arise whenever someone brings it or any similar topic up. While kin selection somewhat becomes orthodox, a few scientists attempt to refute it. One of them is Anthony Caswell, a former professor and researcher at the University of Miami (UM).
Caswell details his opposition to kin selection in his book The Social Gene (FriesenPress, 2016). Kin selection is a type of natural selection wherein an individual will sacrifice his/her own life to save closely related organisms (or relatives) in order to ensure the survival of the genes they both share.
Caswell disagrees with the hypothesis because he, like many others, asserts animals also perform altruistic acts for those who don’t even belong to their family - and at the cost of their own lives too. In The Social Gene (aptly titled in opposition to the selfish gene, another name for kin selection), Caswell provides many examples of animals who assisted unrelated individuals and even formed colonies or herds with them. To back up his facts, he also points to scientists who also oppose kin selection.
Readers know the attribute that is opposite to the selfish gene – the social gene – is also shared by humans and not only by animals, the most altruistic of all organisms. Caswell objects to kin selection as a dogma of animal behavior. The genes in animals do not restrict them from interacting with someone outside their family or kind. By writing The Social Gene, Caswell calls on the scientific community to modify the hypothesis on kin selection and reinterpret animal behavior.
Caswell’s The Social Gene will be displayed at the upcoming 2017 American Library Association Annual in Chicago on June 23, 2017.
Copies of the book are available at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Social-Gene-Anthony-Caswell/dp/1460292030/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497640522&sr=1-1) and FriesenPress (http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000033891115/Anthony-Caswell-The-Social-Gene).
The Social Gene
Written by Anthony Caswell
Published by FriesenPress
Published date October 12, 2016
Paperback price: $15.94
About the author
Anthony Caswell was a long-term professor and researcher at the University of Miami Medical School. He now lives in North Georgia.
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