| Wednesday, March 27, 2013 |
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Balance of Power by Linda Kohanov
By Samy AbulEla
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Over a hundred years ago, a budding naturalist noticed that mutual aid was a significant factor in determining fitness for survival. Prince Pyotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, an early fan of Darwin’s theories, led research expeditions through Siberia and Eurasia, planning to add his own observations to the scientific literature on evolution. But soon enough he was confused and, initially at least, sorely disappointed.
“I failed to find — although I was eagerly looking for it — that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of the struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution,” Kropotkin wrote in his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.(READ MORE)
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