Exercise 3 - explain Boyd

The goal of this assignment is to give you practice explaining (summarizing and explicating) a text. The reading comes from a popular science book, written by an academic, intended for a general audience. It was on the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks (its popularity doesn’t say anything about the quality or weakness of its arguments; I’m just trying to give you context for the intended reader). Your goal is to summarize the main points of the argument in one part of the text (leaving out details not necessary for the reader to understand the argument) and explicate ideas, assumptions, and other elements that are crucial to the argument but are not clearly explained by Boyd.

You will explain the first four pages (51-55) of Boyd’s chapter, “The Evolution of Cooperation” in On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. You do not need to read any crossed-out text.

Don’t assume that you should explain each paragraph and present the information in the same order as the original. Think about what is and isn’t needed to explain these pages to your reader so they understand Boyd’s main points.

Keep your submission under 500 words (but you do not need to make it that long; try to explain the passage in as few words as you can without omitting anything important).

Please review exercise guidelines, follow GenAI policy, and submit an updated workload report. Citations are not necessary for this exercise.

Example Boyd explanation

In this text, Boyd argues that cooperation in social animals, including humans, can be explained through evolutionary theory. He begins by asking why, even as rebellious teenagers, we accept cooperation as an obviously good idea. He states that before the 1960s, those studying evolution assumed that cooperation could easily evolve because groups benefit from cooperative individuals. In the mid-1960s, however, William Hamilton and George Williams challenged this assumption. They argued that if an individual in a group behaves altruistically while another does not, the selfish individual is more likely than the cooperator to survive and pass on its genes, making in difficult for cooperation to become a widespread trait in a population.

Boyd notes that unconditional altruism is biologically impossible. Traits are retained only if they offer immediate advantages, and in the short term, selfishness has advantages over cooperation. But conditional cooperation can and does evolve.

Boyd identifies the first step towards evolved cooperation as mutualism, in which individuals help each other as they pursue their own interests. Prey species, for example, evolved a preference for being near others of their species, as there is benefit to being near another individual who wants to avoid the same predators as you. If they show alarm, Boyd states, it signals the presence of danger. Humans evolved a similar preference and dislike being excluded from groups. Yet, he notes, an inclination towards sociality with others can be challenged by competition for resources. He asks how sociality can evolve past a mere inclination towards group living into more robust forms of altruism.

The answer, Boyd states, is active cooperation, in which individuals help others who share their genes, increasing the chance that those genes will spread throughout the population. One obvious example is parents who care for their genetic children, a behavior that is clearly fitness-enhancing. Hamilton, Boyd notes, generalized the principle of altruism towards genetic relatives under the phrase “inclusive fitness”, also known as “kin selection”. Scientists have observed hundreds of species that are altruistic towards genetic relatives, or, stated differently, act selfishly from the gene’s eye view to protect other individuals who share their genes. This behavior is thus not a counterexample to evolutionary theory, on Boyd’s view, but a confirmation of it.

Things to note about this explanation

Unlike the original, it begins with a clear statement of the source’s main claim.
It skips some sentences and expands on others.
It doesn’t have the same number of paragraphs as the source, but is in basically the same order (that’s not required)
Attribution is important, but you don’t need to mention the source in every single sentence. The standard to meet is: will the reader be clear about whether a claim originated from a source vs the writer?
You can refer to the source with pronouns, but treat each paragraph as a new start and make sure you use the source’s name before reverting to the pronoun again.

Suggestion: compare this example to your submission and to the original text!