鈥淚 am trying to finish writing a book on the evolution of cognition, Thought in a Hostile World,鈥� says philosopher Kim Sterelny, author of Dawkins vs. Gould (Icon, 2001).
He finds others have been publishing their work faster than he can read and digest it, so he鈥檚 been catching up with Haim Ofek鈥檚 intriguing Second Nature: Economic origins of human evolution (Cambridge, 2001). Ofek understates the need for cooperation that trade requires, he says: 鈥淭rade cannot flourish in a world in which the strong routinely expropriate the goods of the weak.鈥�
How we escaped that world is the theme of Chris Boehm鈥檚 Hierarchy in The Forest (Harvard, 1999), which Sterelny is revisiting. For his next project on macroevolution, he鈥檚 started Jeffrey Levinton鈥檚 dauntingly thick Genetics, Paleontology and Macroevolution (2nd edition, Cambridge, 2001).
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For relaxation, he鈥檚 leafing through the second volume of the late Bill Hamilton鈥檚 Narrow Roads of Gene Land (Oxford, 2001). The papers themselves are 鈥渕ostly too gnarly for an innumerate like me鈥�, he says. But he finds Hamilton鈥檚 introductions wonderfully idiosyncratic. 鈥淲hat a loss he is.鈥�