The story of evolution, we have been told, is the story of the survival of the fittest….[and] this is partially true…Yet every day, it seems, a book crosses my desk, emphasizing a different side of the story. These are books about sympathy, empathy, cooperation and collaboration, written by scientists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists and others. It seems there’s been a shift among those who study this ground, yielding a more nuanced, and often gentler picture of our nature.
The most modest of these is “SuperCooperators” by Martin Nowak with Roger Highfield. Nowak uses higher math to demonstrate that “cooperation and competition are forever entwined in a tight embrace.”