Abstract
In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences,
evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli-
cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes
giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in-
volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat-
terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to
present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa-
gate the cooperative genes may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be
party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’
parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec-
tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language
and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization
of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci-
ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible
for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p-
lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human
sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat-
terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that
the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec-
ond independent replicator is flawed.