** Monday May 28 5.30pm
Professor Martin A. Nowak (Harvard) will speak on "The Evolution of Cooperation", in the Buckingham House Lecture Theatre, Murray Edwards College. This public lecture, co-sponsored by the Faculty of Divinity and the Faraday Institute, is part of a symposium entitled "Evolution, Cooperation and Ethics'. The symposium is organised by Professor Sarah Coakley at the Faculty of Divinity, in partnership with the McDonald Agape Foundation. http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Lectures.php ABSTRACT The Evolution of Cooperation Martin Nowak Harvard University Cooperation implies that one individual pays a cost for another to receive a benefit. Cost and benefit are measured in terms of reproductive success. Cooperation is useful for construction in evolution: genomes, cells, multi-cellular organisms, animal and human societies are consequences of cooperation. Cooperation can be at variance with natural selection. Why should you help competitors? Prof Nowak presents five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, spatial selection and group selection. Direct reciprocity means there are repeated interactions between the same two individuals and my behavior towards you depends on what you have done to me. Indirect reciprocity means there are repeated interactions within a group and my behavior towards you also depends on what you have done to others. Prof Nowak argues that indirect reciprocity is the key mechanism for understanding pro-social behavior among humans and has provided the right selection pressure for the evolution of social intelligence and human language. -- Dr Joshua Hordern Associate Director, Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge www.klice.co.uk 01223 566619 (office) 07812 504751 (mobile) ...brought to you by HPS-discussion. To subscribe or to be removed please send mail to [email protected]. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
