The Origins of Virtue

"Yes, exactly. In one sense Matt Ridley was restating the message which was already there in The Descent of Man but which had rather been forgotten. What this book did was popularise the idea that cooperation can indeed be favoured by natural selection. This book is a great read because it takes all sorts of examples from history and from everyday life and brings in pieces of economic analysis like the prisoner’s dilemma, which are by now quite well known. It also adds insights from biology – for example, the competition between maternal and foetal genes in the uterus, which not everybody will know about. Nearly 15 years after the book was published, I can still reread it with enjoyment and still gain insights. In a very fast changing field of research, it’s quite a triumph for a book to remain entertaining, enjoyable and insightful so long after it was first published. I think that’s a partial description of his book. My sense is that Ridley has his critics partly because he can’t resist launching torpedoes at his pet hates, which include naive environmentalists and such like. He can sometimes come across as this grouchy individual muttering on about political correctness gone mad and I think that assumed persona does indeed annoy some people. It doesn’t annoy me because I can read past it. I think the best analogy that applies to Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue is with doctors studying the human body. If you want to understand disease and the pathologies the human body is susceptible to you won’t get anywhere unless you have some deep respect for the amazing things the human body can achieve. It’s not until you understand what a remarkable construction the human body is that you can really understand its pathologies. And so it’s not until you can understand what an extraordinary development human cooperation is, and the remarkable things it has achieved, that you can properly get an insight into its continuing fragilities. Yes, Ridley tends to put a lot of emphasis on the remarkable achievements, but I don’t think he’s at all blind to the fragilities of modern society."