David Sloan Wilson

Mixed feelings about this. I guess the main point of the book is that we should use evolutionary ideas to better understand humanity and to help formulate public policy. In order to get there he has to explain evolution and especially his ideas about multilevel selection. Important stuff, but not clearly explicated, especially the multilevel stuff which I understand to be pretty controversial among geneticists. Then the way he applies this stuff to things like schools, businesses, and governments has some good ideas but it feels really thin, illustrated by a few cases and a few experiments that don’t seem conclusive. I’m really very receptive to this way of thinking about things, but I don’t feel like he did a great job making his points.… (more)