James Schwartz. Death of an Altruist

Was the man who discovered the "selflessness gene" too good for this world?

In the cruel Darwinian world, human heartlessness is easily explained. In the end, according to the principle of natural selection, the weak should die out and the strong should be rewarded. Unselfishness often confuses people. The shoots of sympathy, kindness and affection are weeded out almost as soon as they sprout.

Trying to explain the phenomenon of the evolution of altruism, Charles Darwin suggested that natural selection can apply not only to individuals, but also to entire groups - this principle is known as “group selection”. It is obvious that within a single tribe, the largest number of children should be born to “selfish and self-seeking parents,” he wrote in his classic work, The Descent of Man, published in 1871. But at the same time, he added, a tribe, many of whose members are “ready to come to each other’s aid and sacrifice themselves for the common good, will triumph over other tribes . ”

Darwin, however, never fully developed his idea of ​​group selection, and it remains a subject of debate among his followers to this day. The late William D. Hamilton, considered by many to be the most prominent evolutionary thinker since Darwin, proposed a very powerful alternative to the principle of group selection - the theory of familial altruism. Its essence was that altruism, no matter how it manifests itself, is always aimed at genetic relatives. Hamilton was convinced that true unselfishness is almost never found. Among the representatives of the human race, he himself could name only two examples: Mother Teresa and his friend, the brilliant and unpredictable American scientist George Price.

Despite his remarkable scientific achievements and deep personal drama, George Price has remained a relatively unnoticed figure in the history of science. But he played a crucial role in the formation of the conceptual basis of sociobiology and its branch - evolutionary psychology. He pioneered the application of game theory principles to the analysis of conflict in the animal kingdom and developed an elegant formula for describing evolutionary change that helped simplify and refine Hamilton's theory of familial altruism. Price's formula allows us to provide a precise mathematical basis for the theory of group selection.

In the last years of his life, Price ceased to be interested in the problem of recognition of his scientific contributions. Altruism from a task for the mind turned into a matter of life for him. In the summer of 1970, Price, a militant atheist, suddenly became a devout Christian. After that, he tried to combine his work as a geneticist with his new passion: interpreting the Bible. Then he came to the conclusion that a true Christian must first of all help his brothers, and he began to spend more and more time caring for homeless alcoholics and elderly people in his second hometown - London. He served others, and meanwhile his own life turned into chaos. He died in 1975.

In the last years of his life, until his untimely death this spring, William Hamilton wrote and talked a lot about Price, hoping to draw attention to his friend's theories. Earlier this year, Hamilton gave me his voluminous correspondence. With Price's unpublished letters and memoirs at my disposal, I have tried - with the support of his two daughters and many friends and colleagues - to piece together the chaotic life story of this remarkable man.

George Price worked in physical chemistry and journalism before turning to genetics; he came to evolutionary biology by a roundabout route. He was born in 1922 and lost his father when he was only four years old. After graduating from high school in New York, George attended the University of Chicago, where he received a doctorate in chemistry, and later participated in work on the Manhattan Project. In 1947, he married Julia Madigan and they had two daughters. Three years later, the family moved to Minneapolis, where Price began doing medical research at the University of Minnesota. Price was a convinced atheist, and Julia was a devout Christian, and from the very beginning their relationship did not work out. Eight years later, the irritability of both reached its limit and the marriage broke up.

In the 50s, Price began publishing as a journalist. His articles always attracted attention and were often visionary. Thus, Fortune magazine published his article entitled “How to Speed ​​Up the Invention Process.” While punch cards and teletype machines were being used around, Price's article detailed a hypothetical "design machine" equipped with a graphic display, a cursor-like light pen, and a device similar to a modern mouse for rotating, compressing, and enlarging images.

In 1957, Price sent Senator Hubert Humphrey a draft of an essay for Life magazine entitled "Some Thoughts on Reasons for Panic." The article, which warned that the weakening of US military power could lead to disaster, so shocked Humphrey that he entered into a lengthy correspondence with the author. Price shared several ideas about foreign policy with Humphrey, which he derived from game theory. For example, he offered the United States to buy two pairs of good shoes for each resident of the USSR (totaling $2 billion) in exchange for the liberation of Hungary. Price later accepted an offer to work for IBM, where he began developing general-purpose computers and mathematical modeling of the free market.

But soon a sharp turn came in Price’s career. In 1966, after an unsuccessful operation for thyroid cancer, his shoulder joint was partially paralyzed. Having received large insurance, he decided to use this money to change his field of activity one more time - the last time.

In November 1967, Price arrived in England on the ship Queen Elizabeth. With the insurance money, he rented a huge apartment in a prestigious London area near Oxford Circus. In a letter to his daughters, he jokingly described his London adventures: “My dear little ones, in London I have already seen a lot, including the British Museum library, the Natural History Museum library, the University of London library, the University College library, the Public Historical Medical Library and the Scientific -technical library. I hope to soon visit the library of the Royal College of Surgeons and the library of the Royal Zoological Society . "

On one of these library trips, Price came across William D. Hamilton's now classic article, "The Genetic Evolution of Social Behavior." This paper, which marked a turning point in the history of evolutionary biology, became Price's starting point in this field of science.

According to Darwin's theory, natural selection is the survival of the fittest, and those individuals that bear the largest offspring are considered the strongest. It was not difficult for Darwin to explain the evolution of those abilities that were useful to the individual itself, for example, improved vision. It turned out to be more difficult to explain the evolution of behavior that benefited group members, but at the same time reduced individual resilience. In the early 1960s, this phenomenon was usually explained using the theory of group selection. Natural selection was believed to operate on two levels, favoring, on the one hand, more viable individuals (those that bear more offspring) and, on the other hand, favoring more viable groups. A selfish individual usually leaves behind more descendants than an altruistic individual, but a group with many altruists grows faster than a group without them.

Hamilton completely disagreed with this idea. He argued that any form of evolutionary adaptability, including self-sacrifice, is the result of natural selection. Biologists understand the phenomenon of vitality too narrowly - this is how Hamilton imagined the problem. In addition to counting the descendants of one individual, it is necessary to mathematically estimate the offspring of its relatives depending on the degree of relationship. According to Hamilton's idea, the survival of certain genes was of decisive importance, and not at all the survival of individuals who possessed these genes.

In March 1968, Price wrote to Hamilton asking him to send him a copy of the article: “Your mathematics are too cumbersome to be fully understood while sitting in the library . ” Nevertheless, the first thoughts expressed by Price demonstrated such a deep understanding of the question that Hamilton, inspired, wrote him a response: two pages in neat handwriting. Hamilton talked about his latest achievements, but also somewhat upset Price by saying that he would not be able to maintain correspondence because he was going to Brazil for nine months to do research.

Left to his own devices, Price decided to achieve the same result as Hamilton, but in a simpler, more direct way. That summer he wrote to Hamilton in Brazil that he had succeeded in obtaining a more transparent (though less strict) formulation of the final result of the article. Price was modest. In fact, he not only simplified Hamilton's mathematics. He reimagined the process by which genes are strengthened and weakened by natural selection - using a surprisingly simple equation. The equation was so condensed that it could be applied to any kind of selection, “whether it be the choice of a book or a radio station or genetic selection,” Price later wrote in a letter to a friend.

At the heart of the Price equation is the mathematical concept of covariance, a statistical quantity that describes the relationship between two sets of data. Take, for example, the change in precipitation and temperature in a given location over a period of thirty days. If the amount of precipitation does not depend on temperature, then their covariance will be close to zero. If, on days when precipitation is above normal, the temperature is also above normal, the covariance will be positive. And vice versa: if the temperature decreases on these days, the covariance will be negative.

But how can we use the concept of covariation to describe the process of natural selection? The Price equation reflected changes in the frequency of occurrence of a gene as generations changed. If a particular gene leads to an increase in offspring, then it will occur more often in the next generation. It's so simple that it sounds like a tautology. However, mathematically this dependence was expressed in a completely original way. In addition, Price proposed a more complex and precise way of describing kinship ties. Hamilton based his conclusions on the example of an infinitely large population. Price noted that in a small population of closely related individuals, kinship should be described differently. Individual A may be negatively related to individual B, that is, individual B may pass on fewer genes than on average to other members of the group. The concept of negative kinship seriously changed Hamilton's picture. It became clear that if you have a gene that is useful to your group, it will only survive if it is more useful to your immediate relatives than to your distant relatives. In addition, it turned out that animals could harm themselves in order to further harm others. Price called this "vicious behavior": it may ultimately benefit an animal to take the life of its "negative relative", even if it costs itself.

At first, Price was convinced that his equation was so elementary that it had probably already been derived by someone before. He decided to check this by talking to a specialist at the famous Gaulton Laboratory (department of human genetics, named after Darwin's relative Sir Francis Gaulton) at University College London. In June 1968, he visited the laboratory to speak with Cedric Smith, a respected biostatistician. “Smith said it was very interesting, very beautiful, and that he had never seen anything like it ,” Price wrote to his mother. After questioning Price about what he was doing, Smith brought him to the dean of the faculty. An hour and twenty minutes later, Price had a prestigious position, his own office and the keys to it. He felt as if he had grown wings.

Having secured the support of recognized experts, Price enthusiastically set about documenting his findings. He was convinced that with the assistance of the university he would be able to obtain funds and publish his work.

Meanwhile, Hamilton had returned from Brazil and Price contacted him again in July 1969. It's been almost a year since they last spoke. In a letter to Hamilton, Price tried to explain to him as gently as possible that his theory of familial altruism did not work quite as he had imagined. Price generously tried to spare Hamilton the embarrassment that publicly pointing out his mistakes would have caused. He provided his telephone number and the time when he could be contacted.

In their first telephone conversation, Price admitted that he himself was surprised by the result: “It’s just some kind of miracle.” He wondered if Hamilton had noticed that the equation could describe group selection as well as individual selection. Hamilton was skeptical. After all, it was precisely the rejection of the theory of group selection that allowed him to come to the idea of ​​family altruism. However, Price eventually succeeded in getting Hamilton to reconsider his position - a century after Darwin first spoke of group selection, Price's equation made it possible to accurately describe the conditions under which the interests of the group are superior to the interests of the individual. Hamilton soon admitted defeat. “I am delighted with your formula,” he wrote to Price in December 1969.

No matter how unique Price’s equation was, one could not count on the unconditional publication of his first article on this topic. Hamilton, remembering how he himself had been rejected and underestimated while working on the theory of familial altruism, decided to help his friend avoid this fate. Together they hatched a cunning plan to get Price's paper into Nature , one of the most prestigious scientific journals. First, Price will offer them his mathematical paper on natural selection. And in a week, Hamilton will send to the magazine a new interpretation of the theory of family altruism, which will be based on the Price formula.

As expected, Price's paper was immediately returned, and Hamilton's paper, a renowned scientist, was accepted without reservation. As planned, Hamilton wrote to Nature that he wanted to take back his paper. And he explained: he used a “new powerful method” and cannot, in good conscience, publish the results until a description of the method itself appears in the journal. The plan worked flawlessly: on August 1, 1970, in the journal Nature . Price's article "Natural selection and covariation" was published

In the summer of 1970, at the age of forty-seven, Price suddenly converted to Christianity. “On June 7, I gave up and admitted the existence of God,” he told his friends. He perceived this appeal as a logical necessity arising from a series of strange coincidences. Having calculated the probabilities of these events and recognizing them as “astronomically small,” he came to the conclusion that supernatural forces were at work here.

Over the next year, Price combined his academic work with his new passion: biblical interpretation. Taking a very literal approach to the text, Price decided to relate the differences in the four versions of the Gospel to each other. About a year after his conversion, he completed a fifty-page article, “The Twelve Days of Easter,” in which he proposed lengthening the eight-day Holy Week. He was convinced that he had solved a mystery that had long puzzled biblical interpreters.

Hamilton, to whom Price sent the manuscript, was shocked by the way the events of Easter week were reconstructed and advised him to publish the article. However, he did not accept Price's evidence of the existence of God and, contrary to his friend's hopes, did not convert to Christianity.

Meanwhile, Price's second important discovery was about to see the light of day. Back in 1968, the summer he inadvertently came up with his famous equation, Price became interested in the fact that male animals of the same species rarely fight each other to the death. In July of that year, concerned that the insurance was running out, Price worked day and night on a new paper in which he proposed that evolutionary biologists approach conflict in the animal kingdom from a game theory perspective.

Price realized that an animal's genetically optimal behavior could be determined by the behavior of other animals. Say, in a population of animals genetically programmed to wage war, an animal programmed to avoid danger may be in an advantageous position. And vice versa - in a population of not too aggressive males, the advantage will be on the side of the hostile male. Price entitled his article: “Antlers, Intraspecific Aggression and Altruism” and submitted it to the journal Nature at the end of July 1968 . In February, it turned out that Nature was ready to publish the article, but only in an abridged version. Several years passed, but Price never took up the task of reworking his work.

Price's paper was reviewed by John Maynard Smith, Dean of the Department of Biology at the University of Sussex. He realized what possibilities were hidden in Price's unpublished theory, and decided to use it in his new article. Maynard Smith proved himself to be a decent person and offered Price co-authorship.

In the fall of 1972, the journal Nature accepted for publication an article entitled “The Logic of Conflict in the Animal Kingdom,” signed by two names: John Maynard Smith and George Price. “Never before has a collaboration with a reviewer ended so successfully for me: I became a co-author of a much better article than I would have come up with myself ,” Price wrote to Maynard Smith. This paper first introduced the idea of ​​evolutionary game theory, an idea that has since been applied to the analysis of everything from mutual courtship in African antelopes to the exchange of eggs in bisexual fish.

In June 1972, the grant allocated to Price by the British Research Council expired; the scientist did not try to renew it. Now he preferred to devote more time to his Christian activities and less time to mathematical genetics. He soon decided to live according to his own interpretation of the teachings of Christ. Inspired by Christ's advice from the Sermon on the Mount: not to worry about tomorrow, Price pushed himself towards disaster. He almost looked forward to joy when the hardships fate had in store for him would reach their extreme. “My daily expenditure has already been reduced to fifteen cents ,” he wrote to Maynard Smith in October. “ I look forward to the day when I will not have this money left . ”

A month later he was limited to a pint of milk a day and completely weakened from malnutrition. He stopped taking thyroxine, a hormone needed to survive thyroid cancer. Price was convinced that God wanted him to live and would not let him die. In early December, Price apparently tried to commit suicide - at least he ended up in the hospital. The alarmed doctor discovered mucous swelling in him - the result of a lack of thyroxine - and, without saying a word to the patient, he injected him with the missing hormone. Taking the improvement in his condition as a sign that he was destined to move on with his life, Price followed his doctor’s advice and began taking the pills again.

In February his religious crisis intensified. Price claimed that he had a personal encounter with Jesus that opened his eyes to the true nature of Christianity; he realized that his, Price's, real responsibility was not to study the Bible, but to care for and love people. From that moment on, he dedicated himself to those in need. He helped in several nursing homes and gave all his money to homeless alcoholics, often inviting them to stay with him. He tried to correct the mistakes of his personal life: he asked for forgiveness from his eldest daughter Anne-Marie for abandoning her and being a bad father. For a short time, he even hoped to restore his marriage to his ex-wife Julia and gather the whole family in London.

At the end of 1973, having moved out of his comfortable apartment, Price began to live as a homeless tramp. Once a model IBM employee with short hair and a suit, Price was now all overgrown, wearing slippers and colorful shirts, and wearing a huge aluminum cross around his neck. He gave away everything he had: even his watch and jacket, and barely made ends meet. In a letter to Hamilton, he explained that he lives as it is written in the Gospel of Luke (6:30): “Give to everyone who asks you; and from him who takes away what is yours, do not ask anything back . ”

In those rare hours when Price was not working in the field of Christianity, he continued his genetic research in the Gaulton laboratory, where Cedric Smith got him an annual grant from the Medical Research Council. However, by the end of the year he had to minimize his visits to the laboratory because his charity objects were causing everyone a lot of anxiety. Once, a violent alcoholic (whose wife Price stood up for more than once) urinated in front of everyone on the steps of the main entrance of the genetics building, broke the headlight of a bicycle and, swearing obscenely, shook out the entire contents from some student’s bag. that appeared shortly before It’s good that an article in Nature , where Price was a co-author with Maynard Smith, added weight to him in the eyes of his superiors. He wrote to his daughter Anne-Marie: “I think one headline article in the journal Nature can compensate for one act of urination at the main entrance of the laboratory.” .

In March 1974, Price found temporary shelter in the home of an elderly woman who had previously received help from him. He kept his location a secret from his charity subjects, hoping that this would allow him to work with Hamilton on a joint project on sexual selection. In June, he began working part-time as a night office cleaner. He wrote to Hamilton: “I think for the first time in my life I worked honestly - worked for others, and not for my own pleasure . ”

In August, Price changed his place of refuge for the last time in his life and moved to live in a commune. He wrote to his daughter Caitlin that he began to get back on his feet again and gradually acquire property, which he no longer so easily gave away left and right. In November, he confessed to his brother Edison that he had abandoned charity and become an ordinary Christian.

Shortly before Christmas, Price stayed with the Hamiltons at their country house near London for just over a week. On December 19, when he was leaving his friends, his former mood almost returned to him. The owner of the house almost managed to convince Price to resume genetic research. The Hamilton family was going to celebrate Christmas in Ireland and were expecting him to visit them again after the New Year. However, upon returning to London, Price's condition apparently began to deteriorate rapidly. On January 6, 1975, he was found dead. On the floor next to him lay the nail scissors with which he had cut his throat.

It took the scientific community a long time to appreciate Price's achievements, perhaps because Price himself never sought recognition. Thus, the application of his formula to the analysis of group selection revealed broad prospects, but Price never focused on this. Shortly before his death, Hamilton said: “It’s like discovering differential calculus, talking about it in an obscure paper, and not even explaining how useful it can be . ” In 1975, Hamilton tried to lift the veil of secrecy over Price's theory. But Hamilton's article did not attract much attention at the time.

Now the situation may have begun to change. In 1995, twenty years after Price's death, theoretical biologist Stephen Frank of the University of California, Irvine, published an article in the Journal of Theoretical Biology highlighting Price's remarkable contributions to the theory of evolution. The magazine also printed a previously unpublished paper by Price, a comprehensive review of his theory of the mathematics of natural selection. (There are two more of his articles to be published.)

Price, with his completely new approach to the evolution of altruism, deserves a special place in the history of evolutionary biology. But ironically, this was prevented by his own struggle with personal egoism. In one of his books, Hamilton recalls a conversation that took place between him and Price at the time when he himself began to understand how his friend’s discovery could change the very idea of ​​​​group selection.

“I thought you would understand that,” Price said.

- Then why don't you work on it yourself, George? - asked Hamilton.

- Well, yes, and Cedric expects this from me... But I still have so much to do. You know, genetics is not my main job. Although, maybe I should pray - what if I'm wrong?

Linguafranca , July/August 2000
Original article
Abridged translation by Olga Yurchenko