Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2010 Jan 12;365(1537):13-8. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2009.0197.
Two conflicting tendencies can be seen throughout the biological world: individuality and collective behaviour. Natural selection operates on differences among individuals, rewarding those who perform better. Nonetheless, even within this milieu, cooperation arises, and the repeated emergence of multicellularity is the most striking example. The same tendencies are played out at higher levels, as individuals cooperate in groups, which compete with other such groups. Many of our environmental and other global problems can be traced to such conflicts, and to the unwillingness of individual agents to take account of the greater good. One of the great challenges in achieving sustainability will be in understanding the basis of cooperation, and in taking multicellularity to yet a higher level, finding the pathways to the level of cooperation that is the only hope for the preservation of the planet.
在整个生物界中，可以看到两种相互矛盾的趋势：个体性和集体行为。自然选择作用于个体之间的差异，奖励那些表现更好的个体。然而，即使在这种环境中，合作也会出现，而复细胞生物的反复出现就是最显著的例子。在更高的层次上也存在着同样的趋势，个体在群体中合作，这些群体与其他群体竞争。我们许多环境和其他全球性问题都可以追溯到这些冲突，以及个体代理人不愿意考虑更大的利益。实现可持续性的巨大挑战之一将是理解合作的基础，并将多细胞生物提升到更高的水平，找到合作的途径，这是保护地球的唯一希望。
