…by which I mean I wrote it and I’ll put it here for anyone who wants to make a recording or video.

How does a selfish genome, evolved over eons

Of survival of the fittest, in a contest to the finish

With Nature red in tooth and claw, perpetually clashing

End up producing altruism and compassion?



The ultimate conclusion to this crux of evolution

Cutting straight through the confusion, took a brilliant contribution

From a genius in collusion with a top-notch institution

To tie the threads together and arrive at a solution



And every day, unknown, in destitution

Away in a library he toiled in seclusion

Inside, he was longing to cut through the illusion

Gonna figure out life’s secrets, gonna start a revolution!



Then an insight came, the rule that bears his name

If you grow up in a family your genes are half the same

Reproduction of the bloodline, not the body, is the aim.

You gotta placate Darwin, but you’re gonna shift the frame



Well, the word got around, they said this kid is insane, man

Look at all the mysteries that we can now explain, man

Gotta go to Oxford and develop that huge brain, man

And the world’s gonna know your name - what’s your name, man?



William Donald Hamilton

My name is William Donald Hamilton

And there’s a million things I can’t explain

But just you wait…just you wait



When he was thirty-four he saw, how the law, of relation

Applied to hymenoptera, produced cooperation

By degree, can’t you see, how the key’s the queen bee

And at a stroke, he understood eusociality



Moved on to America and set up shop in Michigan

Turned to herd behavior and he studied bugs and fish again

Why they move in groups instead of fending for themself

Started uniting, rewriting every treatise on the shelf



There would have been nothing left to do

For someone less ambitious

But he turned from bugs and fishes

To why creatures act malicious

They were noting, devoting time to acts of resistance

Against conspecifics signaling a high genetic distance



Combining, redefining every field he gets his hands on

Changing times, paradigms, see him now as he stands on

The brink of a revolution sweeping zoology

With Darwin, we can rewrite biology!

(with Darwin, we can rewrite biology…with Darwin, we can rewrite biology…)



William Donald Hamilton

We are waiting in the wings for you

You could never back down

You never learned to take your time!



Oh, William Donald Hamilton

When biology sings for you

Will they know how much work it took?

Will they know you rewrote the book?

So many places still to look, oh



He’s headed to the Congo now, a final expedition

Just another scientist, going on a mission

Overturning certainties and breaking with traditions



But me? I taught him

Me? I worked with him

Me? I learned from him

Me? I challenged him

And all our genes follow his conditions



There’s a million things I can’t explain,

But just you wait.

What’s your name man?



William Donald Hamilton!

