Abstract

My comments will focus on the second and third chapters of Sober’s book , which explore Darwin’s ideas about altruism, group selection and kin selection , and sex-ratio evolution . Sober makes a persuasive argument for his main claim: that Darwin was a subtler thinker on these topics than he is often taken to be. While there is much that I admire in Sober’s lucid discussion, I will focus on points of disagreement. Readers should note that this is not the first time that Sober and I have disagreed on these issues .Sober begins his chapter on group selection with a brief history of the modern debate on the topic, which began in earnest in the 1960s. One of the key figures in this debate was George Williams, whose book Adaptation and Natural Selection helped convince many biologists that group selection was unlikely to be an important factor in evolution. Sober is critical of many of Williams’ arguments, though ..