by Oren Harman
39. Alfred E. Emerson, “The Biological Basis of Social Cooperation,” Illinois Academy of Science Transactions 39 (1946), 12, quoted in Mitman, The State of Nature, 158.
40. George Gaylord Simpson, “The Role of the Individual in Evolution,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 31 (1941), 16, quoted in Mitman, The State of Nature, 165. Simpson’s accusation was directed against the neurobiologist Ralph Gerard. See Ralph W. Gerard, “Organism, Society and Science,” Scientific Monthly 50 (1940), 340–50, 530–35.
41. Not that Emerson wasn’t a democrat. His problem was how to hold on to a biological view of the democratic state while combating the organicism of fascism. Emerson chose to save organicism by arguing that fascism had misused it by stamping out individual variation—a crucial component of progressive integration of the group.
42. Emerson, “The Biological Basis of Social Cooperation,” 17–18, quoted in Mitman, A State of Nature, 160.
43. For a recent biography see Lanny Ebenstein, Milton Friedman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
44. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; reprint, 2002), xi.
45. This was the title of a book by the Austrian-born economist Friedrich Hayek, a friend of Friedman’s, and, beginning in 1950, a colleague at Chicago. See Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
46. Quoted in Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 26.
47. Ibid., 2.
48. Mitman, A State of Nature, 109.
49. Allee worked on the endocrinology of the pecking order. See W. C. Allee, N. E. Collias, and Catherine Z. Lutherman, “Modification of the Social Order in Flocks of Hens by the Injection of Testosterone Proprionate,” Physiological Zoology 12 (1939), 412–40; W. C. Allee and N. E. Collias, “The Effect of Estradiol on the Social Organization of Flocks of Hens,” Endocrinology 27 (1940), 87–94; W. C. Allee, N. E. Collias, and Elizabeth Beeman, “The Effect of Thyroxin on the Social Order in Flocks of Hens,” Endocrinology 27 (1940), 827–35; Benson Ginsburg and W. C. Allee, “Some Effects of Conditioning on Social Dominance and Subordination in Inbred Strains of Mice,” Physiological Zoology 15 (1942), 485–506.
50. A. M. Guhl and W. C. Allee, “Some Measurable Effects of Social Organization in Flocks of Hens,” Physiological Zoology 17 (1944), 320–47.
51. Warder Clyde Allee, “Biology and International Relations,” New Republic 112 (1945), 816.
52. Mitman, A State of Nature, 184.
53. Warder Clyde Allee, The Social Life of Animals (New York: W. W. Norton, 1938); “Where Angels Fear to Tread: A Contribution from General Sociology to Human Ethics,” Science 97 (1943), 517–25; Mitman, A State of Nature, 178–201.
54. Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma, 83–99.
55. Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 104–14, quote on 104
56. In fact, the earliest use of game theory in World War II by the United States involved designing antisubmarine tactics against the Germans. Mathematicians at the Anti-Submarine Warfare Operation Evaluation Group were said to carry around copies of Neumann’s 1928 paper on poker.
57. Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma, 68.
58. Ibid., 118.
59. John Nash’s “Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 36 (1950), 48–49, had been the original spur to the prisoner’s dilemma, since Nash’s optimal solutions were not satisfied in it. Flood and Dresher themselves now believe that the prisoner’s dilemma will never be “solved,” and nearly all game theorists agree. On Nash’s incredible story see Nasar, A Beautiful Mind.
60. Dugatkin, The Altruism Equation, 59. Allee was, however, a highly respected scientist and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1951.
61. Ibid., 60.
62. Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma, 191.
63. Even former RANDers Luce and Raiffa concluded in 1957 that most social scientists were disillusioned with game theory. R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, Games and Decisions (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1957).
64. Poundstone, 193–94; George Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, 30 June, 1944, in George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters: Volume 3 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), 20.8
CHAPTER 6: HUSTLING
1. “Results of Psychical Research,” New York Times, September 4, 1892.
2. Seymour Mauskopf, ed., The Reception of Unconventional Science by the Scientific Community (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979); Joseph Rhine letters to George Price, April 13, 1971, and May 18, 1972, GPP.
3. Seymour Mauskopf and Michael R. McVaugh, The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychical Research, 1915–1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1980).
4. Samuel George Soal, “Fresh Light on Card Guessing,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 46 (1940), 152; Joseph B. Rhine, New Frontiers of the Mind (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937).
5. Alice Avery Price letters to herself from W. E. Price, April–May 1946, June 25 1950, EPFA.
6. George Price letter to Bob and Marjorie Sheffield, December 1, 1953, GPP; George Price letter to Henry Noel, February 1, 1953, GPP.
7. George Price, “Science and the Supernatural,” Science 122 (1955), 359–67, quote on 360; George Price correspondence with Joseph Rhine, February 25 and March 15, 1941, GPP.
8. Ibid., 367, 363.
9. Aldous Huxley, “Facts and Fetishes,” Esquire, September 1955, 43–44, 115–16, quote on 43; George Price, “Science and the Supernatural,” Science 122 (August 26, 1955), 359–67.
10. Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (New York: Random House, 2006), 43; Upton Sinclair letter to George Price, August 5, 1956, GPP. Einstein had become friendly with Sinclair via correspondence over social issues, and even attended a séance in his home in California in 1930. When Mrs. Sinclair challenged his views about telepathy, Einstein’s wife, Elsa, chided her for her presumption, saying, “You know my husband has the greatest mind in the world.” Mrs. Sinclair responded: “Yes, I know, but surely he doesn’t know everything.” Einstein remained amused and wrote the preface out of friendship rather than belief, a fact that did not disturb Sinclair’s overwhelming pride. See Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 373–74.
11. New York Times, August 27, 1955. A further article in the Times, “Scientists Debate 6th Sense of Man,” appeared on January 8, 1956; Reverend Norman Boswell letter to George Price, January 15, 1956, GPP; C. H. Chalmers letter to George Price, October 28, 1955, and George’s reply, February 2, 1956, GPP; Fern Irene Clarke letter to George Price, September 5, 1955, and George’s reply, October 27, 1955, GPP; Lin Cutler letter to George Price, January 13, 1956, GPP.
12. Science 123 (1956), 7–19, quotes on 8, 9, 15, 13, 11.
13. Ibid., 16.
14. George Price, “Where Is the Definitive Argument?” Science 123 (1956), 17–18.
15. Joan Cook, “John Scarne, Gambling Expert,” New York Times, July 9, 1985; George Price correspondence with Dr. George K. Bennett and Dr. J. Ricardo Musso, July–December 1956, GPP; George Price letter to Dr. Keith S. Ditman, November 14, 1964, GPP.
16. Claude Shannon letter to George Price, January 31, 1955, GPP. Scarne later became the technical adviser on the motion picture The Sting and his hands doubled for Paul Newman’s during the deck-switching scenes. See John Scarne, The Odds Against Me (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966).
17. George Price letter to Al Somit, October 23, 1955, GPP.
18. Gaddis, The Cold War, 163, 123.
19. George Price, “Does Poverty Really Lead to Communism: Outline,” circa 1953, GPP.
20. George R. Price, “Altman’s Theory of Economic Cycles,” Science 117 (1953), 335–36, quotes on 336; George T. Altman, “Cycles in Economics in Nature,” Science 115 (1952), 51.
21. George R. Price, “How to Speed Up Invention,” F
ortune, November 1956, 150–53 and 218–28, quote on 223.
22. Ibid., 228; George Price letter to Dr. Gilfillan, July 1, 1972, GPP.
23. George R. Price, “Arguing the Case for Being Panicky,” Life, November 18, 1957, 125–28, quotes on 125.
24. Ibid., 127, 128.
25. Hubert Humphrey letter to George Price, January 29, 1957, GPP; “Scientist’s Answer to Lagging Research: A Machine That Will Help Invent Machines” and “Researcher Devotes His Life to Science,” Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, January 20, 1957; George Price letters to Martin Kessler, October 2 and 29, 1955, GPP; George Price letter to Al Somit, March 8, 1956, GPP.
26. “Emanuel Piore, 91, Leader and Researcher at IBM,” New York Times, May 12, 2000.
27. George Price letter to E. R. Piore, August 12, 1957, GPP; George Price letter to Dr. Gilfillan, July 1, 1972, GPP.
28. Interviews with Kathleen Price, April 12 and 13, 2008.
29. Correspondence between George Price and the Law Offices of William R. Lieberman, July 25, 1957, and September 28, 1957, the British Library George Price Collection (BLGPC), KPX1_2.3 and KPX1_7.5.
CHAPTER 7: SOLUTIONS
1. Kohn, A Reason for Everything, 227.
2. John Maynard Smith, “In Haldane’s Footsteps,” in Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior, ed. Donald A. Dewsbury (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press), 347–54, quote on 348.
3. Quoted in Kohn, A Reason for Everything, 212.
4. Ibid., 211.
5. Vero C. Wynne-Edwards, “Backstage and Upstage with ‘Animal Dispersion,’” in Leaders in the Study of Animal Behavior, 487–512, quotes on 488, 489.
6. Charles Elton, “Periodic Fluctuations in the Numbers of Animals: Their Causes and Effects,” British Journal of Experimental Biology 2 (1924), 119–63.
7. Alexander M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922).
8. Wynne-Edwards’s descriptions of nature in the Arctic are very similar to those of Kropotkin in Mutual Aid: “Except perhaps among carnivorous predators, competition between individuals for space and nourishment seems commonly to be reduced to a low level among members of the Arctic flora and fauna; they live somewhat like weeds, the secret of whose success lies in their ability to exploit transient conditions while they last, in the absence of serious competition. In the Arctic the struggle for existence is overwhelmingly against the physical world, now sufficiently benign, now below the threshold for successful reproduction, and now so violent that life is swept away, after which recolonization alone can restore it.” V. C. Wynne-Edwards, “Zoology of the Baird Expedition,” The Auk 69, no. 4 (1952), 353–91, quote on 384.
9. V. C. Wynne-Edwards, “Intermittent Breeding of the Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) with Some General Observations on Non-Breeding in Sea-Birds,” Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London A109 (1939), 127–32.
10. There are a number of known density-dependent reproduction-control mechanisms, such as reducing the rate of ovulation via a change in hormone output, or resorption of the embryos in the uterus as a result of stress. Wynne-Edwards, however, was talking about voluntary restraint accomplished via ritualized convention, as in territoriality displays, migration, and abstention.
11. This had been the original insight of Georgii Gause, which he called the “principle of competitive exclusion.” See Sharon E. Kingsland, Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 146–62.
12. David L. Lack, The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954). See also Lack, “My Life as an Amateur Ornithologist,” Ibis 115 (1973), 421–31, The Life of the Robin (London: Witherby, 1943), Swifts in a Tower (London, Methuen, 1956), and Darwin’s Finches: An Essay on the General Biological Theory of Evolution (London: Methuen, 1973).
13. V. C. Wynne-Edwards, Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1962), 20. The fishing analogy first appeared in V. C. Wynne-Edwards, “The Control of Population Density Through Social Behaviour: A Hypothesis,” Ibis 101 (1959), 436–41, quote on 437.
14. Wynne-Edwards called the kind of behavior necessary for such convention “epideictic.” His main study of such behavior was on the red grouse, Lagopus lagopus scotica, in the vicinity of Aberdeen. Olavi Kalela, too, developed this idea. See his “ber die Funktion der Mandibeln bei den Soldaten von Neocapritermes opacus (Hagen),” Zoologischer Anzeiger 152 (1954), 228–34.
15. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 139, emphasis added.
16. Quoted in Kohn, A Reason for Everything, 227. For a study of Wynne-Edwards’ place in the history of the debate on group selections see Mark Borrello, Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
17. Ibid., 224.
18. David Lack, Population Studies of Birds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); Charles Elton, “Self-Regulation of Animal Populations,” Nature 197 (1963), 634.
19. V. C. Wynne-Edwards, “Population Control in Animals,” Scientific American 211 (1964), 68–74.
20. “The Nature of Social Life,” Times Literary Supplement, December, 14, 1962, 967. More reviews are discussed in Borrello, Evolutionary Restraints. I thank Mark Borrello kindly for sharing with me a prepublication version of his manuscript.
21. David Cort, “The Glossy Rats: A Review of Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior,” The Nation, November 16, 1963, 326–29, quote on 327. Wynne-Edwards himself often made the comparison to man.
22. August Weismann, Ueber die Dauer des Lebens [On the Duration of Life] (Jena, 1882); Ueber Leben und Tod [On Life and Death] (Jena, 1884). Both appear in English in Weismann, On Heredity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1891).
23. See John Maynard Smith, “The Causes of Ageing,” in Review Lectures on Senescence, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 157 (1962), 115–27. Peter Medawar and George C. Williams had already been thinking along these “pleiotropic” lines. See Medawar, An Unsolved Problem of Biology (London: H.K. Lewis, 1952), and Williams, “Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence,” Evolution 11 (1957), 398–411.
24. This formulation belongs to Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976; reprint, 1989), 175.
25. The haplodiploid hypothesis turned out to be flawed: many haplodiploid species have not evolved eusociality, whereas other, diplodiploid species have. Still, the “spirit” of the hypothesis survived in the notion that there is genetic conflict between sisters’ interest in producing more female reproductives than males versus the queen’s interest in an equal investment in the sexes. See R. L. Trivers and H. Hare, “Haplodiploidy and the Evolution of the Social Insects,” Science 91 (1976), 249–63, and more recently, N. J. Mehdiabadi, H. K. Reeve, and U. G. Mueller, “Queens Versus Workers: Sex Ration Conflict in Eusocial Hymenoptera,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18, no. 2 (2003), 88–93. For a definitive presentation of current knowledge on social insects see Bert Hlldobler and E. O. Wilson, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009).
26. For a full-length biography of Hamilton see Ullica Segerstrle, Nature’s Oracle: A Life of W. D. Hamilton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). There are many shorter appreciations of Hamilton’s life and science. See Alan Grafen, “William Donald Hamilton, 1936–2000,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 50 (2004), 109–32.
27. This was the writer Alisdair Gray’s remark, quoted in Kohn, A Reason for Everything, 259; 260; interview with Janet Hamilton (Bill’s sister), October 24, 2007.
28. “I realized that I had little talent in mathematics and even less training for it,” he later wrote, “so that my efforts to teach myself what was necessary to understand even the merely standard theoretical population genetics of the day were tedious in the extreme.”
29. On the jacket of the 1999 edition of F
isher’s book.
30. W. D. Hamilton, Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Volume 1: Evolution of Social Behavior (Oxford: Spektrum, 1996), 21; the quote on 22 is from Vincent Wiggles-worth, The Life of Insects (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966).
31. Letters to Mary quoted in Kohn, A Reason for Everything, 265, 266.
32. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, facsimile of the first edition with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 189.
33. Hamilton, Narrow Roads, 22.
34. On the decline of eugenics including Penrose’s role see Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), especially 148–222.
35. Hamilton, Narrow Roads, 14.