The Social Conquest of Earth

Wilson argues that humans conquered the earth the way ants and termites conquered the insect world — through eusociality, the advanced social organisation in which individuals divide labour and subordinate some of their own reproductive interest to the group. His controversial move is to attribute it to group selection rather than to the kin-selection theory he had himself helped make orthodox. From there he reads religion, morality, language, art and tribal warfare as products of the same process, and describes human nature as permanently divided against itself: selection acting on individuals produces selfishness, selection acting on groups produces virtue, and neither side ever wins.

Why it’s on the list: Li Lu opens the whole bibliography with Science, Philosophy, Evolution, and the History of Human Civilization — a section that asks where humans came from before it asks anything about markets. Wilson’s answer is the most reductive one available: the social organisation is itself the adaptation, and everything we call culture is downstream of it.

Where I saw it: On Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the Himalaya Capital bibliography. Kyle saved the list as two X posts that between them photographed only its value-investing section; the full 137-entry list was recovered from the source PDF and transcribed on that page. This is entry 4 in the first section, cited there as the 2012 W. W. Norton edition — which is also its first publication.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the bibliography this came from.
• E. O. Wilson — author.
• Evolution · Human Nature — the argument’s two poles.
• Religion · Morality — which Wilson treats as by-products of group selection.