I guess I fall into the ‘human being’ category mentioned at the close of Professor Kitching’s excellent review of this very interesting book (on Amzon UK’s website), as I’m neither a science teacher or researcher (whilst he doesn’t specify the field, I’m guessing that’s who he’s alluding to!).
As an interested layman, learning about H and his work is both fascinating and yet also slightly frustrating: if, as Segerstrale notes, his ‘mathematical language remained obscure to many of his … colleagues’, and also ‘when writing, he was orientated strictly towards his scientific colleagues, not the general public’, is it any wonder he remains less well known than such popularisers of his own ideas as Dawkins and Ridley?
One of several very interesting aspects of this book that lie beyond the core aspects of Hamilton’s work itself, is how it shows that, despite the potential of an ideal paradigm of science as a disinterested sphere of ‘pure’ reasoning, in the real world things are much messier. The touchy issue of eugenics and its possible relation to H’s research into a genetic basis for altruism is, according to this book, a strong contender for one of the reasons H’s work and ideas were not always welcomed by the scientific and academic community at the time he was pursuing his work. In the post WWII climate, the idea of genetic root causes for human behaviours was decidedly out of favour.
As noted above, Segerstrale herself points out that BH wrote not for general readers but fellow specialists. The absence of a glossary of terms and the endorsements on the back cover suggest Segerstrale does the same. This was one of the first books in a glut of post Darwinian bicentennial reading where I felt I was getting either out of my depth, or just plain losing interest, or both.