For Whose Benefit?

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. The Human Puzzle

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 1-9

3. Your Physical Self

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 11-26

4. Your Psychological Self

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 27-35

5. Easily Explicable Cooperation and Natural Selection

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 37-50

6. Family

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 51-68

7. Friends

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 69-87

8. Humanity—The Paragon of Cooperation?

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 89-109

9. Language

   • Patrik Lindenfors

   Pages 111-127

10. The Last Piece of the Puzzle?—Cooperation Over Our Heads

    • Patrik Lindenfors

    Pages 129-159

11. Epilogue: The Human Super Organism

    • Patrik Lindenfors

    Pages 161-168

12. Back Matter

    Pages 169-172

    PDF

This book takes the reader on a journey, navigating the enigmatic aspects of cooperation; a journey that starts inside the body and continues via our thoughts to the human super-organism.

Cooperation is one of life’s fundamental principles. We are all made of parts – genes, cells, organs, neurons, but also of ideas, or ‘memes’. Our societies too are made of parts – us humans. Is all this cooperation fundamentally the same process?

From the smallest component parts of our bodies and minds to our complicated societies, everywhere cooperation is the organizing principle. Often this cooperation has emerged because the constituting parts have benefited from the interactions, but not seldom the cooperating units appear to lose on the interaction. How then to explain cooperation? How can we understand our intricate societies where we regularly provide small and large favors for people we are unrelated to, know, or even never expect to meet again? Where does the idea come from that it is right to risk one’s life for country, religion or freedom? The answers seem to reside in the two processes that have shaped humanity: biological and cultural evolution.

• Biological Evolution
• Cooperation
• Cultural evolution
• Sociality
• Game Theory

“For whose benefit? provides insights on human evolution and evolutionary biology. After reading this book, the reader will acquire a vast and general information about evolution. The audience of this book includes general readers or students interested in biology, evolution and basics of cooperation. … the book is an active evaluative discussion of the related ideas and concepts.” (Farid Pazhoohi, Evolutionary Psychological Science, Vol. (04), 2018)

• Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

  Patrik Lindenfors

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