Jonathan Silvertown: A Cooperative History of Life

Jonathan Silvertown is an Honorary Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at Edinburgh University's Institute of Evolutionary Biology.

He joins us at the bookshop to talk about his latest exploration into the life sciences, Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life. Moving away from the view that life flourishes under conditions of selfishness, Silvertown emphasizes the role of cooperation in evolutionary development.

Do join us in the bookshop for an intriguing evening with this brilliant researcher, Jonathan Silvertown!

Selfish Genes to Social Beings

For all the "selfishness" of genes, they team up to survive. Is the history of life in fact a story of cooperation? Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it's hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation, Jonathan Silvertown argues, is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, Silvertown digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, life would never have begun.

About Jonathan Silvertown

Jonathan Silvertown is an evolutionary biologist who has published widely on plant population biology. He is the author of eight books, including Dinner with Darwin: Food, Drink, and Evolution and, most recently, The Comedy of Error: Why Evolution Made Us Laugh. Formerly Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, and Chair of Technology-Enhanced Science Education in Biological Sciences, he is now, following retirement, an Honorary Professor in the Institute.