Skepticality #134 - The Price of Altruism - Guest: Oren Harman
Skepticality - The Official Podcast of Skeptic Magazine
English - June 29, 2010 00:00 - 1 hour - 28.1 MB - ★★★★ - 466 ratingsScience Society & Culture culture randi jref radio science secular shermer show skeptic skepticality Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
From "survival of the fittest" to "the selfish gene," familiar evolutionary themes advocate an amoral viewpoint that favors the individual. And yet, evolutionary biologists have uncovered countless examples of altruism in animals and humans — which has given rise to the idea that there is an evolutionary component to these selfless behaviors that can be quantified.
This week on Skepticality, Swoopy talks with Professor Oren Harman, author of The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. Both a history of the study of social evolution and a biography of George R. Price, this book explores a life which would become an illuminating experiment in altruism and lead to the development of the Price equation (a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution).
From "survival of the fittest" to "the selfish gene," familiar evolutionary themes advocate an amoral viewpoint that favors the individual. And yet, evolutionary biologists have uncovered countless examples of altruism in animals and humans — which has given rise to the idea that there is an evolutionary component to these selfless behaviors that can be quantified.
This week on Skepticality, Swoopy talks with Professor Oren Harman, author of The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. Both a history of the study of social evolution and a biography of George R. Price, this book explores a life which would become an illuminating experiment in altruism and lead to the development of the Price equation (a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution).