Beyond Self-interest: Darwin's Altruism Puzzle and Its Solution

The core idea of Darwinian evolutionary theory is natural selection.The primary interpretation of natural lection is individual selection,i.e.individual is the unit of selection.But if individual is the unit of selection,the popular existence of altruism is hard to understand,because of the altruism increasing the fitness of the altruist others,not the fitness of himself.This is the so-called Altruism Puzzle.In the late year of Darwin's life,he try to resolving this puzzle by introducing group selection as a new selection force.Many important new Darwinian biologists in the late 1960s,however,suspected the role of group selection.They proposed kin selection,gene selection and reciprocal altruism as new theory for solving the puzzle.But each of them has difficulties for interpreting of it.From 1990s,more and more biologists have re-introduced and re-interpreted group selection,and have tried to hold a pluralist strategy in order to solve Darwin's Altruism Puzzle