Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life

By Jonathan Silvertown

Whether we are at peace or at each other’s throats, cooperation is in our nature – and has been a ubiquitous feature of life since it arose four billion years ago

In this sweeping and concise alternative history of life, biologist and science writer Jonathan Silvertown addresses the apparent paradox that there is something biological that compels us to be selfish: our genes. Genes are inexorably driven by self-replication, yet he shows that throughout evolutionary history cooperation continually rears its head.

It turns out that the rules of cooperation we encounter in our daily lives are fundamentally the same as those that apply to how parts of a cell evolve to work together and how cells cooperate within a body. This explains a host of different phenomena, from how we acquired our adaptive immune system from selfish DNA to how we can produce a glass of clear beer as a result of cooperative yeast cells.

All are accomplished by making teams of rivals, argues Silvertown. Teaming up requires holding rivalries and self-interest in check. Once formed, teams may be transformed into a new kind of individual. This happens when the replication of team members becomes dependent on the replication of the team. Tracing the path of life backwards from groups to individuals, to cells and then to genes, Selfish Genes to Social Beings takes readers from the familiar to the obscure to reveal how these revolutionary transitions made both us and our world.