In Unto Others, philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson bravely attempt to reconcile altruism, both evolutionary and psychological, with the scientific discoveries that seem to portray nature as red in tooth and claw. The first half of the book deals with the evolutionary objection to altruism. For altruistic behavior to be produced by natural selection, it must be possible for natural selection to act on groups--but conventional wisdom holds that group selection was conclusively debunked by George Williams in Adaptation and Natural Selection. Sober and Wilson nevertheless defend group selection, instructively reviewing the arguments against it and citing important work that relies on it. They then discuss group selection in human evolution, testing their conclusions against the anthropological literature.
In the second half of the book, the question is whether any desires are truly altruistic. Sober and Wilson painstakingly examine psychological evidence and philosophical arguments for the existence of altruism, ultimately concluding that neither psychology nor philosophy is likely to decide the question. Fortunately, evolutionary biology comes to the rescue. Sober and Wilson speculate that creatures with truly altruistic desires are reproductively fitter than creatures without--altruists, in short, make better parents than do egoists.
在诠释奉献的进化意义时，索伯与斯隆展示了一幅为整个动物世界描绘的宏大全景图像，从自我牺牲的寄生虫，到共同组成巨大有机体的昆虫，直至我们自身——视奉献为美德的人类。可以说，这本著作是朝向真正的新达尔文主义迈出的正确一步。
《奉献》是这十年来最重要的著作之一，你无法忽视它的成就。索伯与威尔逊为关于“奉献”的讨论做出了最为全面的研究。——《生态学与进化趋势》
传递知识的书籍应当是原创性与深邃思想结合的产物。遗憾的是，至少在进化理论领域，这方面的书往往顾此失彼、相互矛盾。……《奉献》恰好既是对进化理论的解释系统所进行的彻底而根本的重新审查，也是对研究者从事的生物学以及认识论问题的严格分析。——《纽约书评》
