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Is Cooperation Still a Driving Force of Evolution?
This time last year, Martin Novak, Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and
Professor of Mathematics and Biology at Harvard University, published a controversial book
called, Super Cooperators, (Altruism, Evolution and Why we Need Each Other to Succeed)
arguing that cooperation is as much a driving force for evolution as mutation and natural
selection. The book was co-written by Daily Telegraph columnist and New Scientist editor,
Roger Highfield, and will be serialized in the Daily Telegraph.
The book evolved from the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics which was established in 2003
from a $30 million dollar grant by Jeffrey Epstein and The Jeffrey Epstein Foundation. "I wanted
to provide a platform where evolution and biology could be explained from a purely
mathematical point of view," Epstein notes. "The beauty of mathematics is in its accuracy and
objectivity. It can lead to unpredictable theories." Since then, Novak and the Program have gone
on to establish the first quantitative analysis of several diseases including the kinetics behind in
vivo human cancer cells.
The premise of Super Cooperators is that mathematically, biological cooperation is as important
in evolution as mutation and the dog-eats-dog world of Darwin's survival of the fittest. Novak
stresses that, "The two pillars of evolution are mutation and natural selection: mutation generates
diversity, and natural selection chooses the winner. What I want to argue in this book is that, in
order to get complexity, there is a third principle, co-operation. It's not just a small phenomenon;
it's something that's really needed to explain the world as we see it."
Novak's description of evolutionary cooperation is not to be confused with inclusive fitness, a
core tenant of evolutionary cooperative theory today. Inclusive fitness suggests that evolution
can favor creatures that do not reproduce, so long as they assist in the survival and reproduction
of relatives who carry the same genes - for example, the sterile workers in an ant colony, who
help the queen to raise their sisters.
According to Novak, inclusive fitness is "somewhat like an epicycle," referring to the Ptolemaic
solar system with the Earth at its center. The theory required the planets to move in complicated
patterns to explain their varying orbits. "Somehow you have the impression that there is some
reality attached to it, but the actual mathematical description of any evolutionary process shows
that evolutionary fitness is an unnecessary concept."
Instead, Super Cooperators sets forth five mechanisms of cooperation that are mathematically
necessary for evolution: direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, spatial games, such as
networking, group selection and kin selection. Cooperation also functions at every biological
level: "Genes cooperate in cells, cells cooperate in organisms, and individuals cooperate in
societies." Each mechanism, such as direct reciprocity, also reveals a de facto co-existence and
co-dependence of entities, which just so happens to lead to evolutionary change. Evolution
therefore, is more of a mathematical by-product than a goal.
Even kin selection, which includes nepotism or sacrifices for the survival of a relative, has a
pragmatic explanation, such as embedded chemical triggers to promote one's genes: strip the
lamb of its scent and its mother will let it die. Cover an orphaned lamb in the placenta of a ewe's
offspring and she will adopt it as its own.
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To understand sacrifice and acts of kindness to nonrelatives and to complete strangers, however,
Nowak ostensibly agrees with evolutionary biologist and renowned atheist, Richard Dawkins,
that there could be lingering cooperative genes carried over from when survival stemmed more
from the capacity to live harmoniously in clans. Indeed, the human body is awash with
evolution's remnants: from eyebrows to useless male nipples.
But despite the dispassionate description of cooperation in strictly mathematical terms, Novak is
a devout Catholic. Benevolence is also part of God's bequest he believes and cannot be limited
to a mere linear sequence. It's not even a question of belief but one of faith. And faith is simply a
state of grace.
To debate the origin or purpose of cooperation though, misses the point of the book. Super
Cooperators is about the power of mathematical description and how, when left onto its own,
untarnished by ideas and theories, it has the capacity to describe the nest patterns of life. It sets
the stage for analysis. Novak writes, "At the heart of a successful mathematical model is a law of
nature, an expression of truth that is capable of generating awe in the same way as
Michaelangelo's extraordinary sculptures, whose power to amaze comes from the truth they
capture about physical beauty."
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