William D. Hamilton.
Evolution of Social Behaviour.
Freeman. 1996
Such questioning, born from a love of nature, has motivated the life work of W. D. Hamilton, widely acknowledged as the most important theoretical biologist of the 20th century. His papers continue to exert an enormous influence and they are now being republished for the first time. Each one is introduced by an autobiographical essay written for this collection.
This first volume contains all of Hamilton’s publications prior to 1981, a set especially relevant to social behaviour, kinship theory, sociobiology and the notion of ‘selfish genes’. It includes several of the most read and famous papers of modern biology. A forthcoming volume will be devoted to the second half of Hamilton’s life’s work, on sex and sexual selection.
Narrow Roads of Gene Land will be welcomed by professionals, graduate students and undergraduates from a wide range of disciplines, from evolution, population genetics, animal behaviour and evolutionary ecology, to genetics, social anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, economics and the history of science. But the readership will by no means be restricted to an academic one. The introductions are wholly accessible to non-specialists and they will fascinate and entertain any general reader with an interest in science, providing them with a unique insight into what the life and the enthusiasms of a modern scientist/philosopher are like.
