Abstract
Martin A. Novak and Sarah Coakley (eds),
Evolution, Games, and God: The Principle of Cooperation
, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013; 416 pp.: 9780674047976, £25.95/$35.00 (hbk)
This is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the interface between science and theology to be published in recent years. Many books in the field spread themselves too thinly across a broad range of issues, and are rather predictable. Further advances will come, as here, from going into particular topics in greater depth, engaging closely with particular areas of science, and bringing the resources of philosophical theology to bear.
The topic of the book is the role of cooperation in evolution. Coakley’s point is well taken, that all scientific work on evolution is nested within metaphysical assumptions (a point also well made in a chapter by Ned Hall), and this book focuses on those issues very effectively. The book is inter-disciplinary, and each of the six sections takes a different approach. The chapters are quite diverse in their points of view, which is both a strength and a weakness. Many different views are represented, including disagreements. Most chapters are valuable in themselves, apart from the project represented by the book as a whole.
The book begins with three excellent chapters on the history of the idea of cooperation by John Hedley Brooke, Thomas Dixon and Heather Curtis. The next section is the scientific core of the book, including a chapter by Martin Novak. The main focus is on mathematical modeling of the role of cooperation in evolution, using data from game theory. The strength of this approach is its rigour and precision; the weakness is that game theory can’t really settle what actually happened in evolution. Fortunately, there is an important chapter by Jeffrey Schloss, later in the book, in which he argues convincingly that cooperation was crucial to key evolutionary transitions.
An important theme running through several chapters is the distinction between pre-human forms of cooperation and the distinctive, principled altruism of which humans are capable. There are several chapters focusing on the latter, though it is clear, as the editors point out, that work on this issue is still very exploratory. Given the emphasis on game theory the question arises of whether games such as Prisoner’s Dilemma are modeling pre-human co-operation or human altruism. Justin Fisher argues that they currently model the former but that the games could be adapted to model the latter.
The book then moves towards ethics and theology. It is natural to argue for some kind of convergence between theism and a theory of evolution that emphasizes cooperation; the question is how best to frame that convergence. Alternative approaches are nicely illustrated by the chapters by Alexander Pruss and Philip Clayton. The latter is more wary of using evolutionary cooperation to actually argue for God, and, to my mind, is more convincing. A final chapter on providence and evolution by Coakley has important implications for the large amount of recent literature on science and divine action.
There is much else of value in this volume about which there is no space to comment. Despite the high standard of most chapters, the book doesn’t quite achieve enough of an integration to set out a coherent position, though there are pointers to it in the editors’ long and thoughtful introduction. In many ways, this book provides a model for how to work on the interface between theology and science. It gets down to the right level of scientific detail, and brings strong philosophical and theological resources to bear. The editors deserve our thanks.