The Price Of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

by Oren Harman

In truth, Darwin knew, nature was one grand cacophonous battle—brutal, unyielding, and cruel. For if populations in the wild have such high rates of fertility that their size would increase exponentially if not constrained; if it is known that, excepting seasonal fluctuations, the size of populations remains stable over time; if Malthus was right, as he surely was, that the resources available to a species are limited—then it follows that there must be intense competition, or a struggle for existence, among the members of a species. And if no two members of a population are identical, and some of these differences render the life chances, or fitness, of some greater than others—and are inherited—then it follows that the selection of the fitter over the less fit will lead, over time, to evolution. The consequences were unthinkable, yet Darwin’s logic was spotless. From the “war of nature, from famine and death” the most exalted creatures had been created. Malthus had brought about in him a complete “conversion,” one which, he wrote to his trusted friend Joseph Hooker in 1844, was “like confessing a murder.”24