Frans de Waal, "Survival of the Kindest: Of Selfish Genes and Unselfish Dogs" and "Down with Dualism! Two Millennia of Debate about Human Goodness," Selections from The Ape and the Sushi Master

Frans de Waal [de Vaal] began his work on the link between human and primate behavioral patterns in 1975 with a six-year project studying the world's largest captive colony of chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands. De Waal discussed the initial results of his research into how primates resolve conflict in Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and has since published a series of books that seek to further establish the continuum of conciliatory and aggressive behavioral patterns that link humans and primates: Peacemaking Among Primates (1989), Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (1996), and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (1997).

Originally trained as a zoologist and ethologist in the Netherlands, de Waal is currently the C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. The goal of the Living Links Center is to study the four extant breeds of great apes-the bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans-that connect humans to our primate relatives. By exploring these links, de Waal and his colleagues hope "to reconstruct human evolution, pinpoint the differences and similarities between humans and apes, and educate the public about apes and promote their well-being and conservation." By insisting primates have a "culture" that they learn through observation, de Waal sees himself as challenging both the humanities and the social sciences, which have assumed a sharp distinction between humans and animals, and the sciences, which have depicted humans as "taking over the world by means of aggression."

In "Survival of the Kindest" and "Down with Dualism," two chapters drawn from de Waal's most recent book, The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist (2001), de Waal offers an alternate understanding of the relationship between primates and humans. As de Waal explained in a recent interview, it is by studying the compassionate and altruistic behavior of the bonobo and the other great apes that we can gain access "to a side of ourselves that the textbooks have put under the table."

de Waal, Frans. "Survival of the Kindest" and "Down with Dualism." The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist. New York: Basic Books, 2001. 315-335, 337-357.
Biographical information and digital image drawn from the Living Links Center's Web site.
Quotations from Frans de Waal, interview by Ira Flatow, "Science Friday," National Public Radio, 1 June 2001.

Links to Explore:

The Living Links Center: directed by Professor de Waal, the center seeks to study the links between humans and the four extant great apes--the bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Includes links to a primate taxonomy with a homonoid evolutionary tree based on DNA comparisons and Ira Flatow's interview with de Waal on NPR's Science Friday (starts at 14:30).

"Revolutionary Evolutionist": article on Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, by Michael Schrage, published in Wired magazine in 1995.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics: data on crime in the United States, including reports on recent trends in terms of victims and types of crimes committed.

Biodiversity and WorldMap: provides a wealth of information on the current state of biodiversity and conservation efforts around the globe.

Questions for Learning:

• What is to be gained by studying "the living links" that join humans with their primate ancestors? What does it matter what the homonoid evolutionary tree looks like? After you've visited the The Living Links Center and listened to the interview with de Waal, how do you believe de Waal would answer these questions?

• Dawkins' view of how genes work is antithetical to the position that de Waal supports. As Schrage puts it in "Revolutionary Evolutionist," Dawkins believes that "genes are selfish; the watchmaker is blind. To say otherwise, he insists, betrays the truth. Cherished concepts like 'free will' and 'spirituality' live in the dark, helical shadows of our genes." What evidence does Dawkins rely on to reach these conclusions? What do we gain by accepting that "all life, at its core, is a process of digital-information transfer"?
  
  
• de Waal is obviously aware that humans can be aggressive towards one another as well as kind. Can his argument be used to shed any light on the persistence of criminal activity? As you review the The US Department of Justice's reports on crime in the United States, do you find places where de Waal's argument seems relevant? Can evolutionary theories be used to explain or illuminate such statistical accounts of the behavior of the species?
  
  
• Conservation is a cause that many people find easy to embrace in the abstract; the hard work comes in deciding how to balance the needs of humans and the environment in practical matters, such as city planning, fuel efficiency, public transportation and the maintenance of local and global "biodiversity." After you've visited the Biodiversity and WorldMap web site, you should be in a position to state what the arguments are for working to conserve biodiversity. How does one decide which life forms should be preserved? How are the priorities established?

Questions for Connecting:

• In "What does the dreaded 'E' would mean anyway?" Stephen Jay Gould offers two competing definitions of evolution. Can either of Gould's definitions accommodate de Waal's vision of the evolutionary process? In the end, does it matter how one thinks about the evolutionary process? Is there a necessary connection between how one thinks about evolution and how one understands humankind's place in the cosmos?

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