Selfish Genes to Social Beings

Author: Jonathan Silvertown

Popular science | Evolution | Genetics (non-medical)

Published on 11^th April 2024 by Oxford University Press in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 256 pages
163mm x 242mm x 27mm | 460g

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.