Richard Dawkins on Robert Axelrod

“The first American edition of The Evolution of Cooperation was published in 1984. I read it as soon as it appeared, with mounting excitement, and took to recommending it with evangelical zeal, to almost everyone I met. Everyone of the Oxford undergraduates I tutored in the years following its publication was required to write an essay on Axelrod's book, and it was one of the essays they most enjoyed writing.”

“To be believable, an optimism must first acknowledge fundamental reality, including the reality of human nature, but also the nature of all life. Life as we know it, and probably throughout the universe if there is life elsewhere, means Darwinian life. In a Darwinian world, that which survives survives, and the world becomes full of whatever qualities it takes to survive. As Darwinians, we start pessimistically by assuming deep selfishness at the level of natural selection, pitiless indifference to suffering, ruthless attention to individual success at the expense of others. And yet from such warped beginnings, something can come that is in effect, if not necessarily in intention, dose to amicable brotherhood and sisterhood. This is the uplifting message of Robert Axelrod's remarkable book.”