Charles Darwin Week

Serge Daan, Behavioural Biologist University of Groningen

Chairman of the programme committee, Evolution and Behaviour

Darwin’s idea that human behaviour is the product of evolution and natural selection has slowly gained more solid contours since the publication of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1870/71). Evolution is surely no alternative for rational decision making, but it offers a broad functional framework for both rational and non-rational behaviour. Yet the disciplines of evolutionary biology and of the behavioural and social sciences have long remained separate intellectual enterprises.

In 2001 the NWO councils of Social Science Research (MAGW) and Earth and Life Sciences (ALW) initiated a program to help bridge the gap between these disciplines. The NWO program Evolution and Behaviour had three goals: expanding the insight in the evolutionary basis of human behaviour, stimulating the adoption of evolutionary approaches in the social and behavioural sciences at large, and promoting active collaboration between scientists from the life sciences and the social and behavioural sciences. The program focused on the evolutionary process itself, on the adaptive nature of human behaviour and on the evolutionary principles of social and economic institutions. In spite of its restricted means, the program Evolution and Behaviour has served its aims in an effective manner. It provided the seed money that enhanced interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration. Indeed it generated a new interdisciplinary research community in the Netherlands in an unprecedented way. The extensive participation stems from disciplines as diverse as sociology, economics, anthropology, psychology, biology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, communication studies, neuro-sciences and medical sciences.

At the end of scheduled period of the program, NWO now organizes an international conference on Evolution and Behaviour. The conference will take stock of the achievements reached. It also places the activities in its proper international framework by inviting leading researchers from abroad to share their newest insights. The venue is the splendid and topical setting of the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. The conference concludes the Darwin week in the Netherlands, organized by NWO together with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. The well-known British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar will present the Darwin commemorative lecture. The meeting will provide an exciting and inspiring overview of our rapidly increasing understanding of the evolutionary basis of human behaviour.