Overall Rating of "The Meaning of Human Existence"

[Wilson]

I didn't read this book, although I did read The Social Conquest of Earth. With regard to the argument between Wilson and Dawkins about group selection, I come down strongly on the side of Wilson, and here's the explanation. Dawkins seems to be tied to the idea that evolution is strictly a matter of spontaneous mutations being propagated or failing based on the effects they produce. And that is certainly the major driver of major changes. But there's also a huge effect from the spreading of existing mutations through a population - in other words, the increasing frequency of existing mutations within a species. And that's what drives group selection, I believe. Personality traits like empathy and tendency to cooperate are directed by a large number of alleles, not just one, and so gradually evolution "finds" the best combination. Thus gradually empathy increased to the ideal point to ensure survival for our hunter-gatherer ancestors - not too little, not too much. That fine tuning - of all sorts of personality and physical traits - is also an important part of evolution.

[Steveroonie]

A pretty good integrative look and book, and yes, comments here about redundancy et. al. were on the mark. Nice to see someone with his background taking up central issues.