Evolutionists at war over altruism's origins - The Independent

Evolutionists at war over altruism's origins

An intellectual war of words has broken out between two of the world's leading evolutionists. Oxford University's Richard Dawkins and Harvard's Edward Wilson have gone head to head over the evolution of altruism in the animal kingdom, and whether it can have come about as a result of something called group selection.

The Group Delusion by Richard Dawkins

EDWARD WILSON has given us a characteristically fascinating account of the evolution of social insects (see page 6 and BioScience, vol 58, p 17). But his "group selection" terminology is misleading, and his distinction between "kin selection" and "individual direct selection" is empty. What matters is gene selection.