The Meaning of Human Existence

by Edward O. Wilson

the grand master is multilevel selection. This formulation recognizes two levels at which natural selection operates: individual selection based on competition and cooperation among members of the same group, and group selection, which arises from competition and cooperation between groups. Group selection can occur through violent conflict or by competition between groups in the finding and harvesting of new resources. Multilevel selection is gaining in favor among evolutionary biologists because of recent mathematical proofs that kin selection can operate only under special conditions that rarely if ever exist. Also, multilevel selection is easily fitted to all of the known real animal cases of eusocial evolution, whereas kin selection, even when hypothetically plausible, can be fitted less well or not at all. (I’ll treat this important subject in detail later, in Chapter 6.) The roles of both individual and group selection are clear in the details of human social behavior.