Darwin-L Message Log 2:105 (October 1993)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<2:105>From 72350.1764@CompuServe.COM  Wed Oct 20 12:08:26 1993

Date: 20 Oct 93 12:56:24 EDT
From: Earth Magazine <72350.1764@CompuServe.COM>
To: "INTERNET:D.Oldroyd@unsw.edu.au" <D.Oldroyd@unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Nowak and May reference

David Oldroyd,

The News and Views was "Cooperation wins and stays," by Manfred Milinski, Vol.
364, page 12. The issue was dated July 1, 1993. It discussed a Nowak and May
paper, "A strategy of win-stay, lose-shift that outperforms tit-for-tat in the
Prisoner's Dilemma game," Vol. 364, page 56.

The latest News Scientist (Oct. 9) has a news item on a criticism of May and
Nowak's work made by Robert Huberman of Xerox PARC. Huberman says that M&N's
model only works if all of the cells in the grid revise their strategies
simultaneously. M&N say this isn't so. Huberman apparently has a paper in
PNAS, vol 90, page 7716.

I'm interested in hearing whether anyone thinks that May and Nowak's work is
consonant with Kropotkin's views as expressed in "Mutual Aid," a book which
sits I'm afraid unread on my shelf. (By the way, Kropotkin was well known for
his work on glacial history and physical geography before he became a
revolutionary. He was born Dec 21, 1842, a potential entry for "Today In
Historical Sciences.")

Tom Waters

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