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
Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think Ridley. () The reviews of the book have been mixed, but the controversial title phrase, "How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think" has been explained by considering Dawkins to have worked as an influential educator and concise author, of "The Selfish Gene", who promoted the key ideas of others about evolutionary biology, also including some controversial ideas which are not as widely accepted. As the author of a popular science book, Dawkins had popularized ideas by George Williams about group selection, William Hamilton on the theory of kin selection in evolution, biologist/geneticist John Maynard Smith on evolutionarily stable strategies,