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Sto caricando le informazioni... The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness (2010)di Oren Harman
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. This is an intriguing biography of George Price, a little-known population geneticist, interwoven with an intellectual history of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. While the story of Price's life is diverting and compelling in its own right, the real thrill of this book is that it unveils some very contemporary improvements in the science of group selection and, as the subtitle suggests, the origins of kindness. Oren Harmen does a great job picking through the advanced statistics and elements of game theory that led to Price's most substantial breakthrough, giving the reader a good commonsense understanding of how individual and group behaviors can both be perpetuated through evolutionarily stable strategies. Yes, Price did end his life after a rather spectacular descent into homelessness and futile ministrations to a community of destitute alcoholics, but the attempts that Harmen makes to link the body of Price's professional work to his personal life are a bit of a stretch. While there is an appealing symmetry to the study of altruism and the surrendering of one's autonomy to the idea of Jesus Christ, there seems to be little indication that Price's late-life fundamentalism and erratic behavior correlated meaningfully with his relatively passionless theorizing. What make it a good story is that it comes together in meaningful ways in the imagination of the reader, rather than in the life of the subject. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
Describes the intellectual journey of eccentric American genius George Price, who tried to answer the evolutionary riddle of why people are nice, and eventually gave away all his belongings and took his own life in a squatter's flat. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)576.5092Natural sciences and mathematics Life Sciences, Biology Genetics and evolution Genetics Biography And HistoryClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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I'd recommend this book to anyone interested is both the history of science especially evolution or genetics who also enjoys biography. Harman includes several books on the history of evolutionary theory in his bibliography. I imagine it would be useful to have read those titles before tackling this one if you really want to understand the significants of Price's scientific contributions. However the book can also be read as a psychological biography of a tragic figure in science. ( )