Although Haldane apparently understood the principle of kin selection, it was a further 30 years before another English evolutionary biologist, W D Hamilton, nailed the mathematics of the theory in The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour (1964), one of the most important works in the field of evolution since its inception. The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins, and many other popular science books, were based on kin selection theory, which exposed the selfish machinations and calculations inherent in apparently altruistic behaviour.

So why hadn't Haldane — a brilliant and inventive biologist ­— taken the idea of kin selection to its natural conclusion? In a startlingly honest interview for the Web of Stories website in 1997, the eminent evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, a former student of Haldane's, said that this failure was partly political:

I have to put it down, to some extent, to political and ideological commitment… Continue reading

Sources

• Aeon Magazine
• Image: Tennessee Journalist

The annual event, in the northern Italian resort city of Rimini, brings together international experts on religion, politics, economics, science and the arts to debate cutting-edge issues and promote dialogue between different cultures.

"A proper understanding of creation, especially an understanding set forth by a thinker such as Thomas Aquinas, helps us to see that there is no conflict between evolutionary biology or any of the natural sciences and a fundamental understanding that all that ‘is', is caused by God," said a keynote speaker, Professor William E. Carroll of Oxford University's theology faculty.

"Evolutionary biology is that area of science which helps us to understand better the origin and development of human beings, but whatever those arguments are in evolutionary biology they, in principle, do not conflict with the fundamental understanding that all that ‘is' is created by God," he said.

"God causes the world to be the kind of world which it is and the natural sciences help to disclose what kind of a world we have."

With Professor Carroll on the platform was Professor Ian Tattersall, of the anthropology division at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"Science is a different way of knowing than spiritual faith. Both answer to a need that humans have ‘to know', but they are answering different parts of the question," Tattersall said.

He added that "many scientists are believers, so there's certainly no incompatibility in principle between the two".

Carroll said evolutionary biology is often hijacked by those seeking to promote a secular and exclusive understanding of the origins of human nature.

He mentioned two such people, Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, and said both "are really ignorant of philosophy and theology, and so they make all sorts of goofy philosophical and theological claims".

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Vatican Radio

Image: RiminiMeeting