title: Strange bedfellows: A Russian prince, A Scottish Economist, and the role of empathy in early theories for the evolution of cooperation.
abstract: From 1888 to his death in 1921, Russian Prince Peter Kropotkin forced biologists to ask themselves whether natural selection inevitably led to a dog-eat-dog world, or whether pro-social behavior could also be a product of the evolutionary process. In this historical vignette, I focus on Kropotkin's theory of "mutual aid," with emphasis on the role that empathy played in that theory, and the unexpected source--economist Adam Smith's 1759 book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments--of Kropotkin's ideas on empathy in animals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.
authors.forename: Lee Alan
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Dugatkin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001695:Biology / Q000266:history; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D004645:Empathy; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D012425:Russia (Pre-1917); D012641:Selection, Genetic; D012919:Social Behavior