The Neighborhood Project, by David Sloan Wilson
Subtitle: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time
This book is based on a single premise, which is that a knowledge of evolution (in particular, multi-level evolution, the sort of thing which happens at the gene level, the organism level, and the species level simultaneously) can be used to help with problems in human society. In other words, that understanding evolution can help you understand your neighborhood. It's an appealing premise.
Unfortunately, I can't say that this book really delivers. It is apparent that Wilson knows a lot about evolution in what we conventionally call biology. He introduces us to intricate details about the water strider, the wasp, and the human immune system (both a product of evolution and an evolving system, itself).
He also introduces us to other fields of study, such as prevention science, sociology, and economics, and shows us what they look like through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist. He takes great delight in telling us about the different countries, social classes, and backgrounds of the many different people he has met and worked with in the course of his research. This is a good thing, as it shows that scientists can be either gender, any class, rural or urban, and from any part of the world.
He also does a bit of sociology himself, telling us about how the different parts of academia (fail to) relate to each other, and what results when he or others try to bridge the gaps that have grown up as a result of ever-increasing specialization. This also humanizes science itself, showing scientists as human beings, not immune to fear of the unknown, cliquishness, jealousy, or excess enthusiasm at the early phases of a project.
Here's what he does NOT do. He doesn't tell us how to use evolution to improve your city, one block at a time. I don't know if the title (and subtitle) were foisted on him by a publisher or not, but it makes a promise which the text of the book entirely fails to deliver on. Perhaps they were concerned that fewer people would buy it if it were titled, "The Neighborhood Project: Applying Evolution to Sociology to Found New Think Tanks and Publish Papers". Because really, that's all that has happened thus far.
In fact, there was one really nifty piece of information that we get here, which is a result of Wilson's own research. If you take a survey of social attitudes called the Developmental Assets Profile, which asks how much you agree with statements like "I think it is important to help other people", and you give it to all the school students in a city, you can get a map of high and low points of what we can call "social capital". Some neighborhoods will have more, some less. Then, you can take a look at how much people decorate their homes for Halloween and Christmas. The maps will correlate to a large degree.
This means that, if you want to know the attitudes of a neighborhood towards statements like "I am sensitive to the needs and feelings of others", you can make a pretty good guess by driving around that neighborhood in late October or mid December. Which is a lot easier than giving surveys to their (hundreds or thousands of) kids.
There you are. That's the fact about neighborhoods which we get in this book. You don't get the actual R-squared, or any other statistical measure of correlation, and you certainly don't get to see the maps of Binghamton, New York which Wilson made with these different data sources. You do get to hear about where in Wilson's office he hung the map which he made with this data. You also get to hear how Wilson felt about it (he felt good about it).
Which is a fun fact, if you can use the word "fact" for something as vague as "they correlated". But it's a pretty slim reward for almost 400 pages of reading. I am glad that Wilson finds it exciting to be doing studies on his home town, using his skills as a biologist to measure and analyze the places where he lives. I am glad that he finds the life stories of the many different colleagues he has worked with, to be so varied and interesting. I am glad that he is working to build bridges between different academic disciplines, so that they can use their different perspectives and theoretical tools to help figure out how social capital can be built up, and how and why it erodes, because the loss of it in this country over the last half century is pretty well established, and it is a big problem.
When they do pool their knowledge, and put it together in this way, perhaps one of them will write a book which will deserve the title that was given to this one instead.
This book is based on a single premise, which is that a knowledge of evolution (in particular, multi-level evolution, the sort of thing which happens at the gene level, the organism level, and the species level simultaneously) can be used to help with problems in human society. In other words, that understanding evolution can help you understand your neighborhood. It's an appealing premise.
Unfortunately, I can't say that this book really delivers. It is apparent that Wilson knows a lot about evolution in what we conventionally call biology. He introduces us to intricate details about the water strider, the wasp, and the human immune system (both a product of evolution and an evolving system, itself).
He also introduces us to other fields of study, such as prevention science, sociology, and economics, and shows us what they look like through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist. He takes great delight in telling us about the different countries, social classes, and backgrounds of the many different people he has met and worked with in the course of his research. This is a good thing, as it shows that scientists can be either gender, any class, rural or urban, and from any part of the world.
He also does a bit of sociology himself, telling us about how the different parts of academia (fail to) relate to each other, and what results when he or others try to bridge the gaps that have grown up as a result of ever-increasing specialization. This also humanizes science itself, showing scientists as human beings, not immune to fear of the unknown, cliquishness, jealousy, or excess enthusiasm at the early phases of a project.
Here's what he does NOT do. He doesn't tell us how to use evolution to improve your city, one block at a time. I don't know if the title (and subtitle) were foisted on him by a publisher or not, but it makes a promise which the text of the book entirely fails to deliver on. Perhaps they were concerned that fewer people would buy it if it were titled, "The Neighborhood Project: Applying Evolution to Sociology to Found New Think Tanks and Publish Papers". Because really, that's all that has happened thus far.
In fact, there was one really nifty piece of information that we get here, which is a result of Wilson's own research. If you take a survey of social attitudes called the Developmental Assets Profile, which asks how much you agree with statements like "I think it is important to help other people", and you give it to all the school students in a city, you can get a map of high and low points of what we can call "social capital". Some neighborhoods will have more, some less. Then, you can take a look at how much people decorate their homes for Halloween and Christmas. The maps will correlate to a large degree.
This means that, if you want to know the attitudes of a neighborhood towards statements like "I am sensitive to the needs and feelings of others", you can make a pretty good guess by driving around that neighborhood in late October or mid December. Which is a lot easier than giving surveys to their (hundreds or thousands of) kids.
There you are. That's the fact about neighborhoods which we get in this book. You don't get the actual R-squared, or any other statistical measure of correlation, and you certainly don't get to see the maps of Binghamton, New York which Wilson made with these different data sources. You do get to hear about where in Wilson's office he hung the map which he made with this data. You also get to hear how Wilson felt about it (he felt good about it).
Which is a fun fact, if you can use the word "fact" for something as vague as "they correlated". But it's a pretty slim reward for almost 400 pages of reading. I am glad that Wilson finds it exciting to be doing studies on his home town, using his skills as a biologist to measure and analyze the places where he lives. I am glad that he finds the life stories of the many different colleagues he has worked with, to be so varied and interesting. I am glad that he is working to build bridges between different academic disciplines, so that they can use their different perspectives and theoretical tools to help figure out how social capital can be built up, and how and why it erodes, because the loss of it in this country over the last half century is pretty well established, and it is a big problem.
When they do pool their knowledge, and put it together in this way, perhaps one of them will write a book which will deserve the title that was given to this one instead.