Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life

By Jonathan Silvertown

Book Overview

For all the "selfishness" of genes, they team up to survive. Is the history of life in fact a story of cooperation?

Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it's hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation, Jonathan Silvertown argues, is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, Silvertown digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, life would never have begun.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198876394
• ISBN13: 9780198876397
• Release Date: July 2024
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.9" x 8.8"