The Evolution of Culture in Animals

Where recent quantitative work on cultural evolution has gone astray, this book remedies. Like Darcy Thompson's On Growth and Form, Bonner's work is devoted to the largest possible synthetic view of a phenomenon along its evolutionary path. Somehow the author (necessarily) pays tribute to sociobiology while usually sidestepping its pitfalls of genetic determinism. A primary example of both of these qualities is the fact that Bonner traces the evolution of culture back to the direction of spin in bacterial flagella. Unlike other biologists that branched out to more popular, humanist subjects (Wilson, Dawkins), Bonner actually succeeds at providing new scientific understanding. I seek out odd sized hardcover editions, and the first edition of this book is a beautiful example. It has a long, horizontal shape and intricate drawings (mainly of birds) throughout and on the coversleeve reflecting the mature and artful 1970s vision of an ecological purism still in reach.