The Evolution of Cooperation on. When Richard Dawkins set out to "examine the biology of selfishness and altruism" in "The Selfish Gene", he reinterpreted the basis of evolution, and therefore of altruism. He was "not advocating a morality based on evolution", and even felt that "we "must" teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature." But John Maynard Smith was showing that behavior could be subject to evolution, Robert Trivers had shown that reciprocal altruism is strongly favored by natural selection to lead to complex systems of altruistic behavior (supporting Kropotkin's argument that cooperation is as
The Selfish Gene and Natural Selection" (1966), which argued that altruism is not based upon group benefit "per se", but is a result of selection that occurs "at the level of the gene mediated by the phenotype" and any selection at the group level occurred only under rare circumstances. This approach was developed further during the 1960s by W. D. Hamilton and others who opposed group selection and selection aimed directly at benefit to the individual organism: Despite the principle of 'survival of the fittest' the ultimate criterion which determines whether [a gene] "G" will spread is not whether the behavior is to