thanks for the reaction and the very interesting-sounding references.

I’m not really shure if I agree with you that the article in the NRC is really superficial. I think the focus was more on the persons behind the ideas that on the ideas/theories themselves. A legitimate choice by the authors, I think.

Nevertheless, I would have preferred an article that focused more on the theories than on the persons.

Individual selection and group selection are not theoretical alternatives. It is well recognized that both can happen. Wilson, already long time ago in his 1976 book Sociobiology, claimed that group selection is a determining force to explain some natural patterns (like altruism). He thought that because individual selection could not explain altruism, group selection could. The answer from the more reductionist biologists is that individual selection does explain altruism (kin selection by hamilton, that you describe above) and yet stronger that when individual selection opposes group selection, individual selection wins. That is why group selection, fashionable in the seventies/eighties, drop out of the bleeding edge of evolutionary biology.

What now is recognized in the evolution of altruism is that space plays a role. To the date, if you set up a population of altruists and let them evolve, a egoist mutant wins. But if you add space in the model, and allow for altruist individuals to be more frequently in contact with each other, altruism might evolve as a stable strategy.

This link to spatial structure makes the connection evolutionary biology/sociology interesting. Think in guetto forming. We politicians do not like it, but perhaps it is a “natural” way to organize ourselves…

In any case, to follow up the evolutionary biologists that are busy with the evolution of altruism and related things, don’t pay much attention to Wilson.

A not too old attempt to fundament multilevel selection is here:
Multilevel selection: the evolution of cooperation in non-kin groups
Goodnight, C.J. 2005
Popul Ecol: 47: 3-12

A more recent article from somebody here in NL tackling the issues that you are concern with is:
Why kin and group selection models may not be enough to explain human other-regarding behaviour
van Veelen, 2006
Journal of Theoretical Biology: 242: 790-797

If you care about the evolution of cooperation, the following is the most important recent paper, check the references. Their point is that for cooperation to evolve, you need to have repeated interactions, memory, and the capacity of choose your interaction partners:

The coevolution of choosiness and cooperation
McNamara et al, 2008
Nature 451: 189-192

And last but not least, a duo that worked out relations in between human behaviour, space, cooperation and war:

The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War
Choi and Bowles 2007
Science 318: 636-640

Interesting field of research, no doubt… by the way, the article that you quote from the nrc (from the cpb director, I believe) seemed very superficial to me… what’s your opinion?