Tuesday was the latest meeting of the London Science Book Club (now officially a year old!), and our pick was Supercooperators, out just this year by mathematical biologist, Martin Nowak, and former New Scientist editor, Roger Highfield. It being almost Christmas, this was the perfect touchy-feely tome our group needed to get us into the spirit. I've often heard friends of mine (usually bankers) claim that selfishness is programmed into our genes, to justify bad behaviour and greed. In fact, as Nowak's research proves, there is a good case to be made that cooperation has played a vital part in evolution. Essentially, his argument is that "natural cooperation" is as important as Darwin's idea of natural selection.There's a lot in the book that our group had heard before, and some of it a long time ago: I was already familiar, for example, with the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons, which are both fleshed out in detail in Supercooperators. But Nowak's trick is to frame familiar ideas like these in the world of biology. We all found his argument compelling, and Highfield had also done a brilliant job of illustrating the science in a way that's fun to read. The real pleasures of this book are the anecdotes and the glimpse you get into the everyday life of a scientist. For at least one of our group, it was the favourite book club pick of the year.
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