Foreword
by John Maynard Smith ix
Preface xi
Part 1 Darwinism, its Rivals and its Renegades
Chapter 1 Walking archives 3
Chapter 2 A world without Darwin 7
1859 7
Rivals and follies: 1859 and beyond 35
Goodbye to all that 47
Chapter 3 Darwinism old and new 53
Anticipations of things past 53
Organism to gene 59
Structures to strategists 66
Complexities and diversities 79
Chapter 4 Demarcations of design 81
The scrapheap of chance 87
'Strange deviations tied together' 93
Artefacts of our minds 106
Part 2 The Peacock
Chapter 5 The sting in the peacock's tail 113
Flying in the face of natural selection 113
The career of a controversy 118
Chapter 6 Nothing but natural selection? 123
'The advocate of pure Darwinism' 123
Coloration for protection 124
Coloration for recognition 129
Explaining away display 131
Coloration without selection 133
Males for Darwin, females for Wallace? 146
Wallace's legacy: A century of natural selection 155
Chapter 7 Can females shape males? 165
Only humans can choose 165
Not choosing, just looking 167
'The instability of a vicious feminine caprice' 168
The trouble with taste 174
Chapter 8 Do sensible females prefer sexy males? 183
Good taste or good sense? 183
Darwin's solution: Beauty for beauty's sake 183
Wallace's solution: Not just a pretty tail 186
Is 'good sense' sensible? 191
Fisher's solution: Good taste makes good sense 201
Chapter 9 'Until careful experiments are made ...' 205
Chapter 10 Ghosts of Darwinism surpassed 231
The changing face of sexual selection 231
A happy ending to the peacock's tale 243
Part 3 The Ant
Chapter 11 Altruism now 253
The problem with altruism 253
The problem solved 253
'Altruism' reanalysed 264
Chapter 12 Altruism then 267
Nature most cruel 267
Altruism unseen 274
Altruism levelled down 283
Chapter 13 The social insects: Kind kin 293
Chapter 14 Make dove, not war: Conventional forces 311
Chapter 15 Human altruism: A natural kind? 325
Darwin: Morality as natural history 325
Wallace: Wise before the event 353
Huxley: Morality at enmity with nature 367
Spencer: Darwinian bodies, Lamarckian minds 371
Rhetorical skirmishes 378
Chapter 16 Breeding between the lines 381
The origin of species 381
Speciating for the greater good 387
Selection's great divide: Mating or weaning? 390
The problem for Darwin and Wallace 395
Darwin against creation: Incidental, not endowed 400
Darwin against natural selection: Incidental, not selected 402
Darwin's adaptive interlude 407
Wallace: The power of natural selection 416
Origins elusive 425
Epilogue 431
Note on the letters of Darwin and Wallace 433
Bibliography 439
Index 475