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Nature's Oracle: The Life and Work of W.D.Hamilton, by Ullica Segerstrale
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W.D.Hamilton (1936-2000) was responsible for a revolution in thinking about evolutionary biology - a revolution that changed our understanding of life itself.
He played a central role in the realization that what matters in evolution is not the survival of the individual but of the survival of its genes. This provided the solution to the long standing problem of animal altruism that vexed even Darwin himself, and in due course resulted in terms like selfish genes, kin selection, and sociobiology becoming familiar to a wider public. Hamilton went on to solve many more major problems, and open up ever new fields - he shaped much of our current
understanding of central problems including the evolution of sexual reproduction and ageing. He became world famous and garnered international prizes.
But this is all in hindsight. In fact, Hamilton's recognition came late - his career is a classic case of misunderstood genius. In this illuminating and moving biography Ullica Segerstrale documents Hamilton's extraordinary life and work, revealing a man of immense intellectual curiosity, an uncompromising truth-seeker, a naturalist and jungle explorer, a risk-taker, an unconventional scientist with a poet's soul and a deep concern for life on earth and mankind's future.
- Sales Rank: #1064181 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-02-28
- Released on: 2013-02-28
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"I suspect that, of all his twentieth century successors, Darwin would most have enjoyed talking to Hamilton. Partly because they could have swapped jungle tales and beetle lore, partly because both were gentle and deep, but mostly because Hamilton the theorist was responsible for clearing up so many of the very problems that had intrigued and tantalized Darwin." --Richard Dawkins
"William Hamilton's name stands above all others in evolutionary biology since the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and '40s. As John Maynard Smith, with whom he had a troubled relationship, said, "He's the only bloody genius we've got." As geniuses often are, he was
a complex character and an exceptional challenge for any biographer. Ullica Segerstrale is ideally qualified to rise to that challenge. She achieves a genuinely affectionate yet warts-and-all portrait of her subject, combined with a good understanding of the deep subtleties of his thinking. Those who loved him, as I did, and those who wish to know more of the astonishing originality and versatility of his contributions to science, will treasure
this book." -- Richard Dawkins
"This is an outstanding biography of a truly brilliant scientist. Segerstrale beautifully interweaves Hamilton's epic work with the details of his life." -- Robert L. Trivers
"Bill Hamilton's remarkable story has now been told: a truly great naturalist, who thought his way to the very heart of evolution by natural selection, completing and expanding the insights of Darwin as he discovered the disorienting and enlightening perspective of the gene itself." -- Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen
"Bill Hamilton is the greatest evolutionary biologist of the last hundred years. Among other achievements are breakthroughs on two of Darwin's enduring puzzles: why individuals are often altruistic even in a competitive world, and why sexual reproduction is so common despite its two-fold cost. Throughout his life Hamilton was driven by intense curiosity, insightful creativity, and intellectual courage. He submitted himself to the bites of a thousand types of insects in the Amazon jungle, and the stings of a hundred varieties of sceptical reviewers from academic journals. Professor Segerstrale's definitive intellectual biography lucidly explains what Hamilton accomplished and-more importantly-how he did it." -- Robert Axelrod, author of The Evolution of Cooperation
"In this superb biography, Segerstrale brings this brilliant, brooding man to life as a meticulous naturalist, ingenious theorizer, prickly introvert, eccentric risk-taker and reflective defender of the underdogs...An expert on the debates surrounding sociobiology in the early years, Segerstrale does a wonderful job of summarizing Hamilton's main arguments and the scientific debates that he was weighing in on at the time . . . It has been ages since I enjoyed a book so much." -- Sarah Hrdy, author of Mother Nature and Mothers and Others
"The skilled historian Ullica Segerstrale has had full access to Hamilton's papers and letters and has done the subject full justice." --Quarterly Review of Biology
About the Author
Ullica Segerstrale is Professor of Sociology at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago and director of its Camras Scholars Program.
Segerstrale holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard, a MA in communication from the University of Pennsylvania, and MS degrees in both organic chemistry and sociology from the University of Helsinki. She has held Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and been supported by the American Philosophical Society, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, among others. Segerstrale is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
She has received a number of awards for teaching, leadership and research.
Segerstrale has written and lectured widely internationally on science and values, the ethics of research, and the debates about what it means to be human. Among her books are Defenders of the truth: The battle for science in the sociobiology debate and beyond (Oxford, 2000), Beyond the science wars: The missing discourse about science and society (SUNY Press, 2000), and Nonverbal communication: Where nature meets culture (Erlbaum, 1997). Defenders of the Truth has been translated into Japanese and Beyond the Science Wars into Chinese.
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
20th Century Darwin!
By David Wineberg
The last chapter of Nature's Oracle is a killer. It lays out the colorful, wide-ranging and enormously deep reaches of Bill Hamilton's lifework. It marvels with insights, angles, perceptions and appreciations. It lays out the uniqueness of the man and his accomplishments. Too bad it wasn't the first chapter of the book. I would have approached it differently, even anxiously. And I think many more will miss out because the whole book isn't framed by that last chapter.
For someone called the 20th Century Darwin, I think the name Bill Hamilton would not garner any sort of recognition outside his discipline. He needs a little buildup. He had an insatiable (as opposed to obsessive) need to understand the lives of all living things. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of them, and no one else came close to his expertise. He risked life and limb without thought to pursue that knowledge. He developed hugely important theories on altruism and sex in plants and insects. He was a pioneer user of computers. He spent endless hours modeling behaviors, long before that became easy and routine. But his biography was written by an academic colleague, clearly for other academic colleagues. Which is unfortunate, because Bill Hamilton's life is definitely worth examining by a much wider audience.
It's not until page 287 that we get this summation:"He wanted to know how nature worked, he wanted to become one with her. ...she was his inspiration and excitement, she was his true conversation partner." If that were stated up front, it too would have given me a framework to keep reading, but by page 287 it was trite.
On the personal level, it seems as if Hamilton's life got in the way of the story. His wife Christine wanted her own career and ended up moving to the Orkneys (!) to practice dentistry. Hamilton became lonely and morose, and took up with a journalist/colleague, Luisa. Or did he? They seemed to live in different countries, although she appears at his family home with the whole family when Hamilton's mother died. Was she accepted as his spouse? Did he ever divorce from Christine? Did they just agree to pursue separate careers? Did they ever reconcile? Did Luisa cause frictions? How did his daughters deal with it - and him? None of it is explored in what otherwise seems to be an exhaustive biography. It's odd because of the granularity of detail in the rest of the book, right down to the difference between O level and A level exams in the UK. You'd think the mother of his three children would merit at least some sort of closure.
The book could also use a glossary for those of us without doctorates in zoology and biology. Words like sosigonic simply do not factor into most vocabularies. But these five dollar words are tossed off with total abandon throughout, and that inevitably slows the flow.
There is a not-so-small irony the author missed in Bill Hamilton's lifelong struggle with peer reviewed journals, particularly Nature. Bill Hamilton's discoveries and observations that resulted in the theories of the Parasite Red Queen, parasite avoidance, deleterious mutation elimination and others - had trouble finding print. These theories very much resemble the process of getting a new idea published in Nature. While Hamilton was busy pushing his revolutionary observations, the system was busy protecting the status quo from this maverick outlier. How ironic. And too bad the author missed it. His theories were clearly the centerpiece of his career, and it wasn't until his death that Nature freely admitted him to its pages. This struggle dominates these pages. But there is so much more to this life than those fights. I hope you will catch that when you read it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By Emilio
A well written and thoroughly researched biography of an extraordinary man. Apart from a sensitive look at the person, technical analyses of Hamilton's major contributions to the theory of evolution are clearly presented. A shy, modest man, who was nonetheless aware of the value if his research has been vindicated.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Universal acid not working? You might need some W.D.
By Owen M. Gilbert
In this book on the famous evolutionist W. D. Hamilton, Ullica Segerstrale presents a comprehensive, intimate, well researched, and insightful account of the man and his work. Segerstrale gives weight to aspects of Hamilton's life in apparent proportion to their importance to his various evolutionary theories. For anyone wanting to learn more about W. D. Hamilton and his life's work, this is the place to start. The reader will find it convenient to have access to the three volumes of Narrow Roads of Gene Land as a reference while reading this book.
Segerstrale's style here is detached and non-argumentative; the reader is left to draw her own conclusions. For example, one interesting question is whether Hamilton had "an exaggerated jealousy for primacy," as Oren Harman stated in his review in Nature. Anyone who reads this book with an inquisitive mind is challenged to form an opinion on the topic of whether Hamilton is paranoid or simply trying to get credit for his ideas. To answer this question, the reader has access to letters and detailed information on Hamilton's career progression--including how he scratched to find initial support, his struggles in getting published and retaining credit for his ideas, and his difficulties in receiving a Ph. D. and advancing his career. It is funny that a person who supposedly did the most important work since Darwin had trouble getting a Ph. D. for it, but then again, resistance is expected when novel ideas are proposed.
Hamilton's work from the outset was destined to generate controversy. The biggest controversies centered on application of his ideas to humans. For the most part, Hamilton avoided discussing humans and focused on other organisms like insects and birds. After all, he was not interested in humans anyway. He ventured into speculation about humans only when asked to, for a couple papers in the 1970s, and then after 1990 when he was writing for his collected works. Late in his career, Hamilton fell into the conventional "innovators trap"--speculating on subjects in which he was not expert. This seems to be a disease common to those who get used to bucking consensus and being right all the time. The problem is what happens when the resistance to new ideas is lowered. It is important not to confuse Hamilton's hard-fought theories with his speculations.
One of the most important goals for philosophy and history of science, but the one most difficult to achieve, is to explain how theorists arrived at their theories (context of discovery). This is something that one cannot derive from the scientific papers. This biography helps explain where Hamilton was coming from. Segerstrale considers the historical backdrop of Hamilton's theories, gives consideration to the novelty of Hamilton's ideas, and uses personal interviews with colleagues to help explain Hamilton's unique approach to his work. Controversies are mentioned only in passing, as they should be, leaving most room to focus on Hamilton and his research programme.
Understanding Hamilton's approach to theorizing may ultimately prove useful for anyone trying to understand the general source of scientific genius in evolutionary biology. One might note that both Hamilton and Darwin had a keen knowledge of natural history. Hamilton relied heavily on mathematics but often had extensive discussions of how his models apply to real organisms. In this sense, there is not much of a difference taken by innovators in evolutionary biology and other fields like physics--those who succeed tend to put empirical findings first and are not overly reliant on prior theoretical expectation. They also tend to be willing to entertain new ideas and do what is necessary to develop ideas showing promise.
The odd thing about this book is the frequent reference to W. D. Hamilton as "Bill." The lack of formality may seem normal for people who knew Hamilton, but it is somewhat strange for somebody who did not. Imagine, for example, reading a biography about Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein, where the subject is continually referred to as "Charlie" or "Al." I prefer either sticking to "Hamilton" or employing Trivers' cool-sounding nickname for him-- "W. D." (see Triver's Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert Trivers (Evolution and Cognition)). After all, Hamilton was not just any old Bill. If Darwin invented a machine that produces "universal acid," as Dennett calls it in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life, W.D. helped keep the machine running with a unique blend of theoretical approaches--in the realms of nepotism, death, parasitism, and sex. What might WD stand for other than "William Donald?" Maybe darwinian "Worry Displacement" factor #40 (WD-40; WD for short). W.D. was a unique and one-of-a-kind genius. Anyone trying to come to grips with the theory of evolution will do well to read this biography.
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