Games, Groups, and the Global Good
How do groups form, how do institutions come into being, and when do moral norms and practices emerge? This volume explores how game-theoretic approaches can be extended to consider broader questions that cross scales of organization, from individuals to
- PDF / 3,200,340 Bytes
- 287 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 77 Downloads / 183 Views
Simon A. Levin Editor
Games, Groups, and the Global Good
123
Editor Professor Simon A. Levin Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Princeton University Eno Hall Princeton, NJ 08544-1003 USA [email protected]
ISSN 1868-517x ISBN 978-3-540-85435-7 e-ISBN 978-3-540-85436-4 DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009926063 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or in any other way, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the German Copyright Law of September 9, 1965, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer-Verlag. Violations are liable to prosecution under the German Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Cover design: WMXDesign GmbH, Heidelberg Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
No problem is more central to understanding biological organization than explaining cooperation. Indeed, the puzzles posed by extreme forms of cooperation were acknowledged by Darwin as challenges to his theories, and delayed his publication of the Origin of Species for 20 years. Today, we have learned a great deal about the evolution of cooperation, from quorum sensing in bacteria to coalitions among humans. Nevertheless, deep questions remain. How is cooperation maintained in large groups, where individuals help others they have never met, or whose identities are unknown to the helpers? Why will individuals apparently sacrifice their own welfare to sustain community norms, through charitable behaviors or punishment of norm offenders? How are institutions, from social norms to civil and religious laws, maintained? How do moral systems arise, and how are they maintained? These questions are central to understanding how societies maintain robustness, and they also are key to achieving a sustainable future for humanity. Much of the formal theory of cooperation can be embedded within the theory of games, the origins of which are usually traced to John von Neumann’s “Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele,” (On the Theory of Parlor Games) published in 1928 in Mathematische Annalen, 100, pp. 295–300. Actually, Emile Borel published several papers that laid the foundations for game theory 7 years earlier, but it was von Neumann who really began to develop a comprehensive theory, culminating in his 1944 Princeton book with Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Von Neu
Data Loading...
