Skip to main content
Log in

Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection

Roughgarden, Joan: The genial gene: Deconstructing Darwinian selfishness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, ix+261pp, $40.00 HB, $18.95 PB

  • Book Symposium
  • Published:
Metascience Aims and scope

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Thanks to Angela Potochink for putting together a fascinating session at ISHPSSB 2009 and additionally to Roberta Millstein and Joan Roughgarden for continuing the conversation we began in Brisbane. Sarah Richardson provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

  2. Some of her criticisms of sexual selection (e.g., the paradox of the lek) apply only to the “good genes” models, whereas others (e.g., lack of heritability of female choice in some species) apply more broadly.

  3. This is itself a confusion; the opposite of “coy” in this context is “willing to mate”; a female could be quite willing to mate, even with a number of partners, while still being choosy.

  4. In principle, other views of natural selection and sexual selection can be analyzed similarly.

  5. Thanks to the Roughgarden Lab at Stanford University and the Griesemer/Millstein Lab at UC Davis for helpful discussion. Thanks are also owed to Erika Milam, Angela Potochnik, and Joan Roughgarden for an enjoyable session at ISHPSSB 2009.

  6. Thanks to Joan Roughgarden, Roberta Millstein, Erika Milam, Erol Akçay, and Pria Iyer for helpful discussion and to Sarah Richardson for useful comments on an earlier draft.

  7. I thank Angela Potochnik also for her initiative and vision in organizing the session devoted to The Genial Gene at the ISHPSSB 2009 conference in Brisbane, Australia, from which these papers have emerged, and Sarah Richardson for her helpful and perceptive review of this manuscript.

References

  • Bastock, Margaret. 1956. A gene mutation which changes a behavior pattern. Evolution 10: 421–439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beldon, David. 2009. Darwin-win: Review of The genial gene by Joan Roughgarden. Tikkun. Sept/Oct.

  • Bonner, J.T., and R.M. May. 1981. Introduction. In The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex, ed. C. Darwin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carranza, J. 2010. Sexual selection and the evolution of evolutionary theories. Animal Behaviour 79: e5–e6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clutton-Brock, Tim. 2007. Sexual selection in males and females. Science 318: 1882–1885.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coyne, Jerry. 2004. Charm schools. Review of Evolution’s rainbow by J. Roughgarden. Times Literary Supplement 30 July 2004.

  • Darwin, C. 1959. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin, C. 1871. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1981.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. 2009. Darwin’s sacred cause: How a hatred of slavery shaped Darwin’s views of human evolution. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeVore, Irven. 1968. Man the hunter. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1955. A review of some fundamental concepts and problems of population genetics. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 20: 1–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1962. Mankind evolving: The evolution of the human species. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrman, Lee. 1970. The mating advantage of rare males in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 65: 345–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erickson, Paul. 2006. The politics of game theory: Mathematics and cold war culture, 19441984. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin.

  • Fisher, Ronald. 1930. The genetical theory of natural selection. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox, Robin. 1967. Kinship and marriage: An anthropological perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Godfray, Charles H. 2005. Parent-offspring conflict. Current Biology 15: R191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodall, Jane. 1967. My friends the wild chimpanzees. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, William. 1963. The evolution of altruistic behavior. American Naturalist 7: 354–356.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, William. 1964. The genetical evolution of social behavior (I and II). Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huxley, Julian. 1938. The present standing of the theory of sexual selection. In Evolution: Essays on aspects of evolutionary theory, ed. Gavin de Beer, 11–42. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kellogg, Vernon. 1907. Darwinism to-day. New York: H. Holt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kerr, Benjamin, and Peter Godfrey-Smith. 2002. Individualist and multi-level perspectives on selection in structured populations. Biology and Philosophy 17: 477–517.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirkpatrick, M. 1982. Sexual selection and the evolution of female choice. Evolution 36: 1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lack, David. 1968. Ecological adaptations for breeding in birds. London: Methuen & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lande, R. 1980. Sexual dimorphism, sexual selection, and adaptation in polygenic character. Evolution 34: 292–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lehrman, Daniel. 1953. A critique of Konrad Lorenz’s theory of instinctive behaviour. Quarterly Review of Biology 28: 337–363.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lessells, C.K.M., et al. 2006. Letters: Debating sexual selection and mating strategies. Science 312: 689–690.

    Google Scholar 

  • Longino, Helen. 1990. Science as social knowledge: Values and objectivity in scientific inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lorenz, Konrad. 1937. The companion in the bird’s world. Auk 54: 245–273.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macedo, Stephen, and Josiah Ober (ed.). 2006. Primates and philosophers: How morality evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mead, L.S., and S.J. Arnold. 2004. Quantitative genetic models of sexual selection. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 19: 264–271.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Milam, Erika. 2010. Looking for a few good males: Female choice in evolutionary biology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mills, S.K., and J. Beatty. 1979. The Propensity interpretation of fitness. Philosophy of Science 46: 263–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, Conway. 1909. Mental factors in evolution. In Darwin and modern science, ed. A.C. Seward, 424–445. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, Elaine. 1972. The descent of woman. New York: Stein and Day.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Donald, Peter. 1980. Genetic models of sexual selection. London: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Okasha, Samir, Ken Binmore and Jonathan Grose. 2009. Cooperation, conflict, sex and bargaining. Biology & Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s10539-009-9189-3.

  • Parker, Geoff. 1979. Sexual selection and sexual conflict. In Sexual selection, reproductive competition in insects, ed. M.S. Blum, and N.A. Blum, 123–166. London: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petit, Claudine. 1958. Le déterminisme génétique et psycho-physiologique de la compétition sexuelle chez Drosophila melanogaster. Bulletin Biologique de la France et de la Belgique 92: 248–329.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rendell, Luke, and Hal Whitehead. 2001. Culture in whales and dolphins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24: 309–382.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roughgarden, Joan. 2004. Evolution’s rainbow: Diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roughgarden, J., and E. Akçay. 2010. Do we need a sexual selection 2.0? Animal Behaviour 79: e1–e4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roughgarden, Joan, Meeko Oishi, and Erol Akçay. 2006. Reproductive social behavior: Cooperative games to replace sexual selection. Science 311: 965–969.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruse, Michael. 2009. The kinder, gentler gene. The Globe and Mail, The Daily Review. July 29.

  • Russett, Cynthia. 1989. Sexual science: The Victorian construction of womanhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Skinner, B.F. 1938. The behavior of organisms. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Slocum, Sally. 1975. Woman the gatherer: Male bias in anthropology. In Towards an anthropology of women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter, 36–50. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson. 1998. Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Takahashi, Mariko, Hiroyuki Arita, Mariko Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, and Toshikazu Hasegawa. 2008. Peahens do not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains. Animal Behaviour 75: 1209–1219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tanner, Nancy. 1981. On becoming human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tiger, Lionel. 1969. Men in groups. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tinbergen, Nikolaas. 1951. The study of instinct. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trivers, Robert. 1972. Parental investment and sexual selection. In Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871–1971, ed. Bernard Campbell, 136–179. Chicago: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watanabe, Kunio. 1994. Precultural behavior of Japanese macaques: longitudinal studies of the Koshima troops. In The ethological roots of culture, ed. R. Gardner, et al., 81–94. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Watson, John. 1919. Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, George. 1966. Adaptation and natural selection: A critique of some current evolutionary thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Edward. 1975. Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Angela Potochnik.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Milam, E.L., Millstein, R.L., Potochnik, A. et al. Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection. Metascience 20, 253–277 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6

Navigation