The Kindness of Strangers

"This book is about one of the great zoological wonders of the world ... In short, it answers one of the biggest questions science has ever faced: Why do we give a damn about the welfare of strangers? Ever since Darwin, a legion of social scientists, biologists, and other scholars have attempted to explain human morality in terms of evolutionary biology--in on our modern parlance, they have looked for altruism in our genes. And yet, whether they subscribe to kin selection or group selection or something in between, they have failed to explain where morality comes from or how it works. In [this book, the author] offers a new answer: Looking for morality in our biology is a mistake, and morality, like any new technology, had to be discovered, refined, and adopted"--Provided by publisher.