Why did an outwardly arcane topic of theoretical biology excite such fierce partisanship? Because the problem it addresses is of fundamental importance, and the stakes in trying to solve it had become exceptionally high. Furthermore, inclusive fitness was beginning to resemble a house of cards. To pull even one out risked collapsing the whole. Pulling cards, however, was worth the price to reputation. There existed in the air the promise of a paradigm shift, a rare event in evolutionary
