Social semantics: toward a genuine pluralism in the study of social behaviour

Pluralism is the coexistence of equivalent theoretical frameworks, either because they are historically entrenched or because they achieve separate insights by viewing the same process in different ways. A recent article by West et al. [Journal of Evolutionary Biology (2007) vol. 20, 415–432] attempts to classify the many equivalent frameworks that have been developed to study the evolution of social behaviour. This article addresses shortcomings in the West et al.’s article, especially with respect to multilevel selection, in a common effort to maximize the benefits of pluralism while minimizing the semantic costs.

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