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Supercooperators
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Download or read book SuperCooperators written by Martin Nowak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the importance of cooperation in human beings and in nature, arguing that this social tool is as important an aspect of evolution as mutation and natural selection.
Download or read book SuperCooperators written by Martin Nowak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: EVOLUTION IS OFTEN PRESENTED AS A STRICTLY COMPETITIVE ENDEAVOR. This point of view has had serious implications for the way we see the mechanics of both science and culture. But scientists have long wondered how societies could have evolved without some measure of cooperation. And if there was cooperation involved, how could it have arisen from nature “red in tooth and claw”? Martin Nowak, one of the world’s experts on evolution and game theory, working here with bestselling science writer Roger Highfield, turns an important aspect of evolutionary theory on its head to explain why cooperation, not competition, has always been the key to the evolution of complexity. He offers a new explanation for the origin of life and a new theory for the origins of language, biology’s second greatest information revolution after the emergence of genes. SuperCooperators also brings to light his game-changing work on disease. Cancer is fundamentally a failure of the body’s cells to cooperate, Nowak has discovered, but organs are cleverly designed to foster cooperation, and he explains how this new understanding can be used in novel cancer treatments. Nowak and Highfield examine the phenomena of reciprocity, reputation, and reward, explaining how selfless behavior arises naturally from competition; how forgiveness, generosity, and kindness have a mathematical rationale; how companies can be better designed to promote cooperation; and how there is remarkable overlap between the recipe for cooperation that arises from quantitative analysis and the codes of conduct seen in major religions, such as the Golden Rule. In his first book written for a wide audience, this hugely influential scientist explains his cutting-edge research into the mysteries of cooperation, from the rise of multicellular life to Good Samaritans. With wit and clarity, Nowak and Highfield make the case that cooperation, not competition, is the defining human trait. SuperCooperators will expand our understanding of evolution and provoke debate for years to come.
Download or read book Super Cooperators written by Martin Nowak and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin's theory of evolution is infamous but it has one major chink. If life is all about survival of the fittest, then why do people risk their lives to save strangers? And what about charity and fairness? Why do we cooperate? Evolutionary scientists have struggled with this problem since the days of Darwin. Now Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak has built on previous efforts, and his own research over two decades, to come up with five laws of cooperation, revealing how this very human characteristic is as fundamental as gravity. With the editor of New Scientist, Roger Highfield, he explains in this groundbreaking book that cooperation is central to the four-billion-year-old puzzle of life - how molecules in the primordial soup first crossed the watershed that separates dead chemistry from biochemistry. In Super CooperatorsNowak and Highfield deftly unpack the basic laws of cooperation to explain the most fundamental mechanics of everyday life.
Book Synopsis Evolution, Games, and God by : Martin A. Nowak
Download or read book Evolution, Games, and God written by Martin A. Nowak and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism’s reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors—rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms “cooperation” and “altruism.” Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation—a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another—arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism—cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good—as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible.
Book Synopsis Super Cooperators by : Martin A. Nowak
Download or read book Super Cooperators written by Martin A. Nowak and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond The Survival of the Fittest: Why Cooperation, not Competition, is the Key to LifeIf life is about survival of the fittest, then why would we risk our own life to jump into a river to save a stranger? Some people argue that issues such as charity, fairness, forgiveness and cooperation are evolutionary loose ends, side issues that are of little consequence. But as Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak explains in this groundbreaking and controversial book, cooperation is central to the four-billion-year-old puzzle of life. Indeed, it is cooperation not competition that is the defining human trait.
Book Synopsis Evolutionary Dynamics by : Martin A. Nowak
Download or read book Evolutionary Dynamics written by Martin A. Nowak and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-29 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time of unprecedented expansion in the life sciences, evolution is the one theory that transcends all of biology. Any observation of a living system must ultimately be interpreted in the context of its evolution. Evolutionary change is the consequence of mutation and natural selection, which are two concepts that can be described by mathematical equations. Evolutionary Dynamics is concerned with these equations of life. In this book, Martin A. Nowak draws on the languages of biology and mathematics to outline the mathematical principles according to which life evolves. His work introduces readers to the powerful yet simple laws that govern the evolution of living systems, no matter how complicated they might seem. Evolution has become a mathematical theory, Nowak suggests, and any idea of an evolutionary process or mechanism should be studied in the context of the mathematical equations of evolutionary dynamics. His book presents a range of analytical tools that can be used to this end: fitness landscapes, mutation matrices, genomic sequence space, random drift, quasispecies, replicators, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, games in finite and infinite populations, evolutionary graph theory, games on grids, evolutionary kaleidoscopes, fractals, and spatial chaos. Nowak then shows how evolutionary dynamics applies to critical real-world problems, including the progression of viral diseases such as AIDS, the virulence of infectious agents, the unpredictable mutations that lead to cancer, the evolution of altruism, and even the evolution of human language. His book makes a clear and compelling case for understanding every living system—and everything that arises as a consequence of living systems—in terms of evolutionary dynamics.
Book Synopsis The Social Conquest of Earth by : Edward O. Wilson
Download or read book The Social Conquest of Earth written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.
Book Synopsis Answers for Aristotle by : Massimo Pigliucci
Download or read book Answers for Aristotle written by Massimo Pigliucci and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci uses the combination of science and philosophy to answer questions about morality, love, friendship, justice, and politics.
Book Synopsis A Cooperative Species by : Samuel Bowles
Download or read book A Cooperative Species written by Samuel Bowles and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. In A Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers. The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment. Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, A Cooperative Species provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.
Download or read book The Culture Code written by Daniel Coyle and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Talent Code unlocks the secrets of highly successful groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders with the tools to build a cohesive, motivated culture. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG AND LIBRARY JOURNAL Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing? In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. Drawing on examples that range from Internet retailer Zappos to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade to a daring gang of jewel thieves, Coyle offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, The Culture Code offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. The Culture Code puts the power in your hands. No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together. Praise for The Culture Code “I’ve been waiting years for someone to write this book—I’ve built it up in my mind into something extraordinary. But it is even better than I imagined. Daniel Coyle has produced a truly brilliant, mesmerizing read that demystifies the magic of great groups. It blows all other books on culture right out of the water.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Option B, Originals, and Give and Take “If you want to understand how successful groups work—the signals they transmit, the language they speak, the cues that foster creativity—you won’t find a more essential guide than The Culture Code.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
Download or read book Into the Gray Zone written by Adrian Owen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From renowned neuroscientist Adrian Owen comes a thrilling, heartbreaking tale of discovery in one of the least-understood scientific frontiers: the twilight region between full consciousness and brain death. People who inhabit this middle region called the 'gray zone' have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors and families often believe they're incapable of thought. But a sizable number of patients--as many as twenty percent--are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift within damaged brains and bodies. In 2006, Adrian Owen led a team that discovered this lost population and made medical history, provoking an ongoing debate among scientists, physicians, and philosophers about the meaning, value, and purpose of life. In Into the Gray Zone, we follow Owen as he pushes forward the boundaries of science, using a variety of sophisticated brain scans, auditory prompts, and even Alfred Hitchcock film clips to not only 'find' patients who are trapped inside their heads but to actually communicate with them and elicit answers to moving questions, such as 'Are you in pain?' and 'Do you want to go on living?' and 'Are you happy?' (Many gray zone patients do, in fact, claim to be satisfied with their quality of life.) Into the Gray Zone shines a fascinating light on how we think, remember, and pay attention. And it shows us how the field of brain-computer interfaces is about to explode, radically changing prognoses for people with impaired brain function and creating, for all of us, the tantalizing possibility of telepathy and augmented intelligence. Ultimately; this is not just a spellbinding story of scientific discovery but a deeply human, affirming book that causes us to wonder anew at the indomitable bonds of love."--Jacket.
Book Synopsis Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life by : Douglas T Kenrick
Download or read book Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life written by Douglas T Kenrick and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kenrick writes like a dream." -- Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology and Neurology, Stanford University; author of A Primate's Memoir and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers What do sex and murder have to do with the meaning of life? Everything. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick exposes the selfish animalistic underside of human nature, and shows how it is intimately connected to our greatest and most selfless achievements. Masterfully integrating cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and complexity theory, this intriguing book paints a comprehensive picture of the principles that govern our lives. As Kenrick divulges, beneath our civilized veneer, human beings are a lot like howling hyenas and barking baboons, with heads full of homicidal tendencies and sexual fantasies. But, in his view, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors -- such as inclinations to one-night stands, racial prejudices, and conspicuous consumption -- ultimately manifest what he calls "Deep Rationality.&" Although our heads are full of simple selfish biases that evolved to help our ancestors survive, modern human beings are anything but simple and selfish cavemen. Kenrick argues that simple and selfish mental mechanisms we inherited from our ancestors ultimately give rise to the multifaceted social lives that we humans lead today, and to the most positive features of humanity, including generosity, artistic creativity, love, and familial bonds. And out of those simple mechanisms emerge all the complexities of society, including international conflicts and global economic markets. By exploring the nuance of social psychology and the surprising results of his own research, Kenrick offers a detailed picture of what makes us caring, creative, and complex -- that is, fully human. Illuminated with stories from Kenrick's own colorful experiences -- from his criminally inclined shantytown Irish relatives, his own multiple high school expulsions, broken marriages, and homicidal fantasies, to his eventual success as an evolutionary psychologist and loving father of two boys separated by 26 years -- this book is an exploration of our mental biases and failures, and our mind's great successes. Idiosyncratic, controversial, and fascinating, Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life uncovers the pitfalls and promise of our biological inheritance.
Download or read book Virus Dynamics written by Martin A. Nowak and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-23 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text describes the emerging field of theoretical immunology, in particular the use of mathematical models to describe the spread of infectious diseases within patients. It reveals insights into the dynamics of viral & other infections.
Author :Lisa Margonelli Publisher :Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 13 :0374712387 Total Pages :320 pages Book Rating :4.3/5 (747 download)
Download or read book Underbug written by Lisa Margonelli and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature’s most misunderstood insects. Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually—and yet, in Margonelli’s telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we’re building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite’s properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others—unearthing disquieting answers about the world’s most underrated insect and what it means to be human.
Book Synopsis Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology by : Dries Daems
Download or read book Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology written by Dries Daems and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Complexity and Complex Systems in Archaeology turns to complex systems thinking in search of a suitable framework to explore social complexity in Archaeology. Social complexity in archaeology is commonly related to properties of complex societies such as states, as opposed to so-called simple societies such as tribes or chiefdoms. These conceptualisations of complexity are ultimately rooted in Eurocentric perspectives with problematic implications for the field of archaeology. This book provides an in-depth conceptualisation of social complexity as the core concept in archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of the past, integrating approaches from complex systems thinking, archaeological theory, social practice theory, and sustainability and resilience science. The book covers a long-term perspective of social change and stability, tracing the full cycle of complexity trajectories, from emergence and development to collapse, regeneration and transformation of communities and societies. It offers a broad vision on social complexity as a core concept for the present and future development of archaeology. This book is intended to be a valuable resource for students and scholars in the field of archaeology and related disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, as well as the natural sciences studying human-environment interactions in the past.
Book Synopsis Darwinian Natural Right by : Larry Arnhart
Download or read book Darwinian Natural Right written by Larry Arnhart and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1998-04-02 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how Darwinian biology supports an Aristotelian view of ethics as rooted in human nature. Defending a conception of "Darwinian natural right" based on the claim that the good is the desirable, the author argues that there are at least twenty natural desires that are universal to all human societies because they are based in human biology. The satisfaction of these natural desires constitutes a universal standard for judging social practice as either fulfilling or frustrating human nature, although prudence is required in judging what is best for particular circumstances. The author studies the familial bonding of parents and children and the conjugal bonding of men and women as illustrating social behavior that conforms to Darwinian natural right. He also studies slavery and psychopathy as illustrating social behavior that contradicts Darwinian natural right. He argues as well that the natural moral sense does not require religious belief, although such belief can sometimes reinforce the dictates of nature.
Book Synopsis Frontiers of Complexity by : Peter Coveney
Download or read book Frontiers of Complexity written by Peter Coveney and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1996-08-27 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "SCIENCE JOURNALISM AT ITS BEST. . . An impeccably researched, amazingly up-to-date, crisply written and well-illustrated survey." --Nature At the cutting edge of the sciences, a dynamic new concept is emerging: complexity. In this groundbreaking new book, Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield explore how complexity in mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, and even the social sciences is transforming not only the way we think about the universe, but also the very assumptions that underlie conventional science. Complexity is a watchword for a new way of thinking about the behavior of interacting units, whether they are atoms, ants in a colony, or neurons firing in a human brain. The rise of the electronic computer provided both the key and the catalyst to our exploration of complexity. A new generation of computers that runs on light and exploits the bizarre properties of quantum mechanics promises to deepen our understanding still further. The advances we have already witnessed are spectacular. The authors take us inside laboratories where scientists are evolving the genetic molecules that enabled life to emerge on earth and generating universes teeming with virtual creatures in cyber-space. We witness the utterly realistic behavior of a school of virtual fish--computer-generated replicas that have been trained to swim gracefully, hunt for food, and scatter at the approach of a leopard shark. Compelling in its clarity, far-reaching in its implications, vibrant with the excitement of new discovery, Frontiers of Complexity is an arresting account of how far science has come in the past fifty years and an essential guide to the rapidly approaching future. "[A] MARVELOUS AND COMPREHENSIVE WORK . . . Virtually any scientist or interested lay reader will find this book engrossing, edifying and inspiring." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
