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
Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle "Archaeopteryx" fossil specimen and the resulting debate between English paleontologist Richard Owen, an opponent to evolution by natural selection, and Thomas Henry Huxley, an advocate for evolution. Hanson himself visits the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, a small museum in Thermopolis, Wyoming, which had acquired an "Archaeopteryx" specimen. Hanson interviews Richard Prum, the Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, who proposed a developmental theory of feather evolution, which focuses "on how feathers grow and not worrying about what they're used for." Hanson also interviews Alan Feduccia, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who disagrees with the scientific consensus that