Herb Gintis is an economist with a strong interest in the assumptions we make about human rationality in our social, political, and economic theories. He has produced a remarkable and deceptively innovative text that could productively be used in a broad range of fields.

 

The topic of game theory is interesting to many people because it describes interaction between competitors, presumably helping us pick the best strategy if the circumstances are well enough understood. We might wonder whether the circumstances are well enough understood in daily life to apply the methods of game theory to our own choices, since it usually to assume that we are rational competitors trying to maximize our own gain.

 

Game Theory Evolving addresses this fascinating question not from a theoretical perspective so much as giving the reader the tools for investigating it themselves in two distinct but complementary ways.

 

First, it provides practical problem-oriented chapters for learning the principles and thinking in terms of game theoretic methods. The problems are not the usual textbook "who cares, anyway ?" type. Rather they are fun and interesting to solve and often lead to direct insights into real situations.

 

Second, it extends game theory into the realm of evolutionary thinking, so we not only understand strategic action but we get some deeper insight into how our historical needs shaped our behavior and even our thought processes. Game theory may help explain how we learned to cooperate and why under some conditions we tend to punish cheaters and treat people fairly even though it provides no apparent advantage to us.

 

Disguised as a lowly academic textbook, Game Theory Evolving is actually a basic toolkit, a passport into the remarkable modern study of evolutionary thinking about human nature, through a practical grounding in the mathematical techniques that have the potential to join our understanding of social sciences and biology.