Supercooperators: The mathematics of evolution, altruism and human behaviour

5th Apr 2011; 18:00

Listen to the audio

(full recording including audience Q&A)
Please right-click link and choose "Save Link As..." to download audio file onto your computer.

Watch the video (edited highlights)

RSA Keynote

Everyone is familiar with Darwin's revolutionary idea about the survival of the fittest, and most people agree that it works - but Darwin's famous theory has one major chink. If life is about survival of the fittest, then why would we risk our own life to jump into a river to save a stranger?

Some people argue that issues such as charity, fairness, forgiveness and cooperation are evolutionary loose ends, side issues that are of little consequence. But as Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Professor Martin Nowak explains - cooperation is central to the four-billion-year-old puzzle of life.

Cooperation is fundamental to how molecules in the primordial soup crossed the watershed that separates dead chemistry from biochemistry.

Cooperation is the key to understanding why language evolved, an event that is as significant as the evolution of the first primitive organism.

And it goes without saying that cooperation is the reason that people live in towns, villages and cities. Cooperation can even help to explain the spread of cancer cells and the role of punishment in society.

Join Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield at the RSA as they explore the five basic laws of cooperation - Kin Selection, Direct Reciprocity, Indirect Reciprocity, Network Reciprocity and Group Selection - in order to explain some of the most fundamental mechanics beneath everyday life.

Speakers: Martin Nowak, evolutionary biologist and Roger Highfield, science journalist, author and broadcaster.

Chair: Dr Jonathan Rowson, the RSA Social Brain project.

Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #supercooperators

Get the latest RSA Audio

Subscribe to iTunes | RSS | Mixcloud

You are welcome to link to, download, save or distribute our audio/video files electronically. Find out more about our open access licence.