Selfish Genes to Social Beings

A Cooperative History of Life

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

Av Jonathan Silvertown, University of Edinburgh) Silvertown, Jonathan (Honorary Professor, Honorary Professor, Institute of Ecology and Evolution

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For all the "selfishness" of genes, they team up to survive. Is the history of life in fact a story of cooperation?Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it's hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation, Jonathan Silvertown argues, is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, Silvertown digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, life would never have begun.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-04-11
Mått165 x 240 x 25 mm
Vikt458 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor256
FörlagOUP OXFORD
ISBN9780198876397

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Jonathan Silvertown is an evolutionary biologist who has published widely on plant population biology. He is the author of eight books, including Dinner with Darwin: Food, Drink, and Evolution and, most recently, The Comedy of Error: Why Evolution Made Us Laugh. Formerly Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, and Chair of Technology-Enhanced Science Education in Biological Sciences, he is now, following retirement, an Honorary Professor in the Institute.

Part One: Groups1: Topos and Narcos2: A river of glowing light3: From selfish genes to social beings4: Big steak or big mistake?Part Two: Individuals5: Matryoshka6: Odd couples7: Phytosympathies8: Good CompanionsPart Three: Cells9: A Brand-New Bag10: Three-card trick11: That green new thing12: From solitude to solidarityPart Four: Genes13: Ordering the primordial soup14: Peas and Justice15: Naked selfishness16: Coda: the cornucopia of cooperationGlossaryReferences

The world may seem brutish and selfish, but Jonathan Silvertown's Selfish Genes to Social Beings celebrates the evolutionary virtues of cooperation. A leading ecologist and evolutionary biologist, Silvertown weaves together science, history, literature, and storytelling to sing the praises of cooperation. Written with warmth and wit, this book provides a much-needed antidote to the unfair stereotype of nature, red in tooth and claw.