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Origins of Virtue:Human Instin

By: Matt Ridley
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Allen Lane
ISBN: 0670874493
ISBN-13: 9780670874491
Released: 05 Mar 1997
RRP: £16.25
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Customer Reviews

Fantastic - By: Ibrahim Ali, 07 Sep 2007
This is an excellent book, agree with it or not it cannot but fail to make you think. A combination of biology, economics & mathematics are used to explain why people do good, it's a fascinating book with numerous anecdotes to support the points. The theme of the book is that most people do good not because of some moral imperative but due to a underlying sense of self-preservation. Admittedly Ridley doesn't answer every question satisfactorily but even so, this book serves as a useful tool for helping understand human nature & reasons for conflict. His conclusions are little grandiose & self serving, but nevertheless his agenda is fairly overt & it's easy to read around bits of the book where his personal views intrude upon the science. Overalll a fantastic read & one that you'll learn an incredible amount from,
Why be nice? - By: kvetner, 14 Oct 2006
I reallly enjoyed this book. Ridley's aim is to answer an old question - "how is society possible?" - largely from the context of evolutionary biology.
For much of the book, his quest is to explain altruism - if our instincts have evolved to maximise the chances of our genes reproducing, then why should we care about strangers?
He starts with the genes themselves - each genome a cooperative society of individual genes, each individuallly 'selfish' but equallly reliant on their neighbours for their survival. This introduces a theme that runs throughout the book - the division of labour - & gives some idea of why the book spends as much time discussing economics as biology.
There's plenty here on game theory & its use to derive theories of altruism (reciprocity & others). I was surprised at how far beyond biology Ridley treads, with chapters on tribalism, war, trade & property, for example.
The book begins by looking at Kropotkin's (flawed) theory of Mutual Aid, which sought to use animal behaviour to demonstrate that we are naturallly altruistic, attempting to employ science to make a political point. By the end, this theory has been long dismissed, but Ridley bravely returns to similar territory. Having shown (and speculated) how biology & evolution can in fact lead to altruistic (or at least cooperative) behaviour, he draws the lessons for real-world politics.
I found this a great way to end - in an era where politicians seem as keen as ever to meddle in science, it's good to see that science can hold lessons for politics too, & good to see a science journalist unafraid to draw those lessons.
Why can't we all just be nice? - By: Sally-Anne, 15 Oct 2004
The truth is, most of us for most of the time, are a lot nicer than we might be entitled to expect under the circumstances. The circumstances being that our natures - our instincts - have been shaped from below, by evolution & our 'selfish genes' rather than above, by some kindly supernatural agency. This book follows on so neatly from Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" that he says, if there had been a volume two of that book, focused on humans, it would be pretty much like "The Origins of Virtue". Another thing that this book has in common with Richard Dawkins' books is its readability. Plain English at its very best. Not alll popular science books are as interesting or as well written as this.

Matt Ridley argues that, even though our genes & evolution ensure that we are selfish, what has made our species so successful is our inclination to trust & co-operate with each other. We don't only co-operate with members of our own family (looking out for our own genes), we also help & co-operate with other members of our community & even total strangers. He examines the reasons for this apparent selflessness & his reasoning is very convincing. The main thread that runs through the book, upon which alll the explanations of our apparent altruism & frequent treachery hangs, is "Game Theory" and, in particular "The Prisoner's Dilemma". According to this theory, we carefully weigh up (not necessarily consciously) the pros & cons of situations where we have something to gain or lose by co-operating, pretending to co-operate, or not co-operating with others. In these situations certain strategies work better than others, depending on the strategies exercised by the other participants in the group. It's possible to be too nice (selfless & trusting) or too nasty (selfish & greedy). Being very nice or very nasty works well when there are mostly nice people in the group but nice people/strategies don't last long when they are exploited by the nasty people/strategies. Everyone suffers when alll the people/strategies are nasty. The best kinds of strategy alllow for the fact that the other person's strategy is unknown: so start by being nice (co-operative, generous) & if the other person reciprocates, continue to be nice until & unless the other person cheats. Then punish them by refusing to be nice & co-operative. There are variations of this "Tit for Tat" strategy but generallly, it's the tit for tat strategies that are employed by the most successful groups - & within successful social groups, trust has come to be highly valued.

To illustrate how selfish we have been throughout human history, often to our own detriment, Ridley lists some of the horrors our species has visited on our environment. Large numbers of species have been destroyed within a short period following the arrival of human kind in an area. The myth of the 'noble savage' is exploded. When homo sapiens first arrived in Australia, New Zealand, America & alll the rest, species were wiped out ruthlessly & carelessly. Any notion of native peoples living in harmony with the land is a modern invention, contradicted by the evidence of recent (on a geological time-scale) extinctions. Convincing reasons are offered to explain this destructive insanity & they are to do with private & group ownership. It's argued that owning resources (like land) that can be controlled & protected (unlike herds of animals that migrate across borders), generates a sense of personal & shared responsibility. People will decimate resources that are deemed to belong to everybody in general (ie the state or nobody in particular) because if they don't use those resources to destruction, someone else will. That's "The Prisoner's Dilemma" in action. State ownership of resources & state responsibility for individuals can actuallly be the cause of selfish behaviour (deforestation, over-fishing & so on). When people have ownership & the ability to trade their produce, trust can be built up between individuals & groups and, Ridley concludes, "trust is the foundation of virtue".

This is a fascinating book, very densely packed with ideas, presented in a logical, coherent & persuasive way. Highly recommended.

We owe our success as a species to our social instincts - By: Coert Visser, 18 Aug 2002
Does true morality exist? Does altruism exist? Does true co-operative spirit exist? Or are alll of these mere examples of subtle selfishness? In other words: are moral, altruistic & co-operative looking people just acting these behaviors to manipulate others? Are they in fact being opportunistic & selfish? Many economists claim altruism does not exist. They would say that, even when a person would do a nice thing to another, it would be, in the end, for his own benefit, & thus be an act of subtle selfishness. He would do it to gain the trust of the other person, to make a good impression & build a reputation of friendliness & trustworthiness or perhaps to create a dependency. Most of economic theory is still based upon the idea that people are in the end selfish & opportunistic. These economist calll this 'rational'.

Matt Ridley does not deny that individuals can act out of selfishness bu he argues that harmony generallly prevails over selfishness. This book explains the paradox that our minds have been build by selfish genes to be social, trustworthy & co-operative. He says we owe our success as a species to these social instincts. He explains that morality is the stuff society is made of. In short his argument goes like this:

1. Society is important because is alllows for divison of labor. It alllows for people to specialize. And the sums of alll our specialized efforts are greater than they would be if we alll had been generalists. In other words: society is synergy between specialists.

2. In order to have a harmonious society, we have to be well-connected to each other. This requires us to be co-operative, social & trustworthy.

3. Being social, co-operative & trustworthy is a way to thrive & thereby an evolutionairy advantage. These traits are built into our nature by evolution.

Matt Ridley carefully argues his case. He uses findings from many disciplines like biology, psychology & economics. Very important parts of this book, & a delight to read, are the chapters where he explains the great work of Robert Axelrod (see: The Evolution of Co-operation, 1984) & the inspiring theory of moral sentiments of economist (!) Robert Frank (see: Passions within Reason, 1988).

The message of this book is important. One lesson is that it is wise to teach our children to be good, because in the long run it pays. If you only act rationallly (in the sense of the rational man from economic theory) you can only expect to reap short-term benefits. Another wise suggestion is that we need to build our institutions in such a way that they draw out our co-operative instincts (instead of building mechanisms aimed only at suppressing our supposed selfish nature). Ridley: "Pre-eminently this means the encouragement of exchange between equals. just as trade between countries is the best recipe for friendship between them, so exchange between enfranchised & empowered individuals is the best recipe for co-operation. We must encourage social & material exchange between equals, for that is the raw material of trust, & trust is the foundation of virtue."

Inspiring material...

Coert Visser

Evolutionary psychology for the masses! - By: , 28 Jul 2001
The title suggests a dry as dust ethics type tome; in fact this is a wonderful explanation of why we act in the way we do. Extremely well written - not only should any educated person have digested this but they'll have had an enjoyable time doing so.