Darwinian Dynamics [Paperback]

Richard E. Michod (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0691050112 | ISBN-13: 978-0691050119

The concept of fitness has long been a topic of intense debate among evolutionary biologists and their critics, with its definition and explanatory power coming under attack. In this book, Richard Michod offers a fresh, dynamical interpretation of evolution and fitness concepts. He argues that evolution has no enduring products; what matters is the process of genetic change. Whereas many biologists have focused on competition and aggression as determining factors in survival, Michod, by concentrating on the emergence of individuality at new and more complex levels, finds that cooperation plays even a greater role.

Michod first considers the principles behind the hierarchically nested levels of organization that constitute life: genes, chromosomes, genomes, cells, multicellular organisms, and societies. By examining the evolutionary transitions from the molecular level up to the whole organism, the author explains how cooperation and conflict in a multilevel setting leads to new levels of fitness. He builds a model of fitness drawing on recent developments in ecology and multilevel selection theory and on new explanations of the origin of life. Michod concludes with a discussion of the philosophical implications of his theory of fitness, a theory that addresses the most fundamental and unique concept in all of biology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Darwinian Dynamics is an excellent and masterful synthesis of the current understanding about how evolutionary principles work at the various levels of biological organization.... Much like Einstein's theories of relativity extended classical mechanics, Michod's multi-selection theory is an extension of classical selection theory.... Well produced and current.... Michod has written what should be a classic for decades to come. -- Norman A. Johnson, Bioscience

Individuality and fitness, two of the most fundamental concepts in evolutionary theory, are anything but simple. Theoretical biologist Richard Michod reviews and extends the state of the art for these subjects in Darwinian Dynamics.... [These are] some of the most exciting advances in modern biology from one of its most able practitioners. -- David Sloan Wilson, Human Biology

About the Author

Richard E. Michod is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Eros and Evolution: A Natural Philosophy of Sex. Among the volumes he has coedited are Evolution of Sex: An Examination of Current Ideas and The Origin of Values.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691050112
• ISBN-13: 978-0691050119
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,296,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read style, but a very interesting book, October 17, 2000

By 

Massimiliano Celaschi (Graffignano, Viterbo Italy) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darwinian Dynamics (Paperback)

I regret that my shallow knowledge of biology and biochemistry did not allow me to fully appreciate this very interesting book, making me to search for references every time I needed to get a better understanding of mechanisms of genetics. It is not an easy-to-read book, and its fragmented style, which requires a thorough attention, does not help the reader. I remember that in university math courses it was said that "economists learnt how to use mathematics, whilst biologists did not", and I believe that this book is a good example of that (as a comparison term, I found much clearer the papers by Maynard Smith). But it is really worth reading it and facing these difficulties, and its price, compared to the deepness of its content, is quite low.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very much worth reading even for one interested in cultural evolution, May 1, 2008

By 

jukka aakula (Helsinki, Finland) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Darwinian Dynamics (Paperback)

My interest is in the cultural group evolution (dual heritance theory) of Boyd and Richerson. Especially I have tried to understand the evolution of co-operation in human societies by weak reciprocity and strong reciprocity and the relevance of the altruistic punishment.

The research of Boyd and Richerson has created a multidisciplinary tradition in economy (Samuel Bowles, Ernst Fehr), policy studies (Elionor Ostrom), antrpology (Boyd, Richerson, Henrich) etc.

This book does not diectly belong to that tradition - but has a clear and very interesting linkage to that. B&R's approach can be seen as a special case of the major transition theory Michod is elaborating.

Michod mentions Boyd and Richerson several times when he discusses the first adaptations of the emerging new unit of selection. Those adaptations are the one's which emerge to decrease conflicts between lower level units - and which are the core to the major transition. I.e. separation of germ line and soma on the other hand and so called worker policing on the other hand.

Even if worker policy is potentially relevant for any major transition a well studied example is the altruistic punishment of humans by B & R. (Another is the worker policing of aunts.)

This book showed to me a new way of utilizing the multi-level selection approach promoted by DS Wilson - and so well adapted for long time in a creative way by the Boyd - Richerson tradition.

For a non-biologist this book was pretty heavy but very much worth reading. I had to read e.g. Maynard Smith's Evolutionary Genetics as support literature.

The mathematical models were difficult to follow - even for one with some experience on mathematical modelling in evolution - because the models were only partially elaborated. In other words details were left out.

5.0 out of 5 stars Is Fitness a Vector?, December 12, 2007

By 

Robert Jones (Emporia, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Darwinian Dynamics (Paperback)

Michod's Darwinian Dynamics is the best book I know of on the subject of biological fitness. My only criticism would be that although it is often assumed that a set can be completely ordered by the preferences of some agent (utility in economics) or evolution (fitness in biology) it is not possible, in general, to define on that set a real valued order preserving function (utility, fitness). See, for instance, "The non-existence of a utility function and the structure of non-representable preference relations" (Beardon, et al, Journal of Mathematical Economics, vol. 37, pg 17, 2002) and references therein. In place of a scalar economists have experimented with vector utilities (see, for example, Hausner, "multidimensional utilities" chap. XII in Decision Processes,

R. M. Thrall, Wiley, 1960). Perhaps biologists should be using a vector fitness. In fact Michod mentions a vector fitness on page 90 of Darwinian Dynamics but he doesn't develop it any further. Perhaps that is the direction future research should take. I have used a vector fitness in my artificial life worlds (Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, vol. 109, pg 159, 2006).