Eusociality: people, ants, naked diggers and other public animals

A well -known naturalist gives a capacious generalization of relevant scientific data on Darwin"s evolution and human behavior ... The history of general social evolution, as well as an intelligible and compressed presentation of human evolution, paying sufficient attention to the use of tools that affects the growth of the brain, but makes a special emphasis on a true source Our superiority is the ability to work together.kirkus reviews in his new book Edward Wilson considers six “great evolutionary transitions” that led to the formation of human society ... It is amazing how he manages to intelligibly explain the nature of these transitions in such a small book. Publishers Weekly magazine Edward Wilson with a characteristic brevity, clarity and wit, as well as unsurpassed ability to synthesize actual scientific information, explains the origin of human society in this work. Richard Roads Historian, Pulitzer Prize winner
Edward Wilson claims that religious and philosophical issues can be reduced to the consideration of genetic and evolutionary components, and the body and mind of a person have a physical basis that obeyed physical and chemical laws. “Eusociality” shows that it is possible to fully understand human behavior only by studying the evolutionary history of other animals. Wilson mentions 17 species of animals in the book, among which naked diggers and crawl-racks, which have developed communities based on altruism and cooperation among the sponges.
He writes about mosquitoes-calls who “dance like acrobats”, about anchos, huddled into tight jambs to resemble gigantic fish, or about social groups of people that contribute to the prosperity of the community as a whole without obvious evolutionary benefits for themselves .
“Eusociality is a relatively rare phenomenon in the evolution of life on Earth, but it led to the emergence of the most pronounced manifestation of personal altruism and the most complex social relations. Eusociality ensured environmental dominance to some land species, in particular ants, termites and people. ”
Quotes:
Millions of living species are the heirs of heroes who have experienced six evolutionary transitions, carrying traces of evolution from unicellular bacteria to individual organisms and further to the developed linguistic abilities of man, empathy and cooperation.
Now we can definitely argue the following: all parts of the body and human mind have a physical basis, obeying the laws of physics and chemistry. And all of them, according to the scientific data we have accumulated, arose as a result of evolution by natural selection.
Scientists no longer consider evolution as a theory. It is a reliably established fact. And natural selection during random mutations is a force that guides evolution, which is confirmed by field observations and experiments.
An example regarding evolution was the brain growth of hominids: from 900 cm3 in Homo habilis up to 1400 cm3 for their descendants - Homo sapiens. On the contrary, the types of cicadas and crocodiles on most signs have not changed much over the past 100 million years. Therefore, they are reasonably called living fossils.
Why read:
“Eusociality” is a brief, but capacious innovative work, including not only modern ideas about evolutionary theory, but also original biological and humanistic ideas that Edward Wilson is famous for.
For whom:
It will be interesting not only to fans of the laureate of the Pulitzer Prize Edward Wilson, the author of the books Future of the Earth and The meaning of the existence of man, but also the widest circle of readers