''The Social Conquest of Earth'' is a 2012 book by biologist

Edward O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of a ...

. Wilson adapted the title of

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

's famous mural as a theme -- "What are we?", "Where did we come from?", "Where are we going?"—for discussing his topic of eusocial behavior in several

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

and a few

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

ian species, and its role in making humans as a species unique. Wilson argues, building on the paper "The evolution of eusociality" (2010) by Wilson, Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'', for more importance of

group selection Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene. Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the behav ...

and against the idea of

kin selection Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like Altruism in animals, altruistic behavio ...

Reception

The ''Nature'' article was controversial, with many experts arguing against its conclusions, including an "outraged response" later in the same journal by 137 authors.

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...

wrote a harshly critical review for '' Prospect'', in which he stated that Wilson had earlier supported Bill Hamilton's theory of kin selection but had, over the years, moved away from it, to the point where it was debatable that he had really understood the theory. The book was given a positive review by Yale psychologist and author Paul Bloom in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The book was listed as on ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'' 100 Notable Books of the Year in 2012.

References

2012 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Books about sociobiology English-language books Works by E. O. Wilson Boni & Liveright books {{biology-book-stub