Theoretical Review
Volume 30, No 1, Published March 30, 2015
DOI: https://…
Keywords: W. D. Hamilton, creativity, social behavior, scientific method, scientific personality, empathy, altruism, Amazon, simulation.
ABSTRACT
Half a century ago the paper by graduate student William Donald “Bill” Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour” (1964), started a paradigm shift in science. That paper showed how basic social behaviors – selfishness, altruism, cooperation, and spite – could be expressed in the language of population genetics, thus opening the door to mathematical model building and testing. He showed especially that altruism can evolve as long as the benefit of an altruistic act falls on a genetically related individual rather than on a random member of a population. Later Hamilton, ever the pioneer, was to open up many other new research fields. But his ideas were often too novel and he had a hard time convincing journal referees.
What they did not know was the range of methods by which he privately arrived at his conclusions: from “external” naturalistic exploration and mathematical modeling to “internal” anthropomorphic understanding of the study object, to a knowledge state that involved a veritable merger between observer and observed. Colorful computer simulation became the natural mediator between his naturalistic, esthetic and mathematical talents.
Brazil played a huge liberating and stimulating role in Hamilton’s life and it became his home abroad, away from his serious Oxford professor persona. He was especially intrigued by the evolutionary puzzles of the flooded forest and helped develop ecological research in the area. The Bill Hamilton Itinerant Center for Environmental and Scientific Education at Lake Mamirauá’s floating research station was founded in his honor. Bill Hamilton was an unusual scientist who sustained an intense creativity all his life. For him, science was the best adventure there was, and Brazil was the place to be.
ISSN: 2224-4476
