MODELING STRATEGIES - CREATING AUTONOMY FOR BIOLOGY THEORY OF GAMES

John Maynard Smith is the person most responsible for the use of game theory in evolutionary biology, having introduced and developed its ma jor concepts, and later surveyed its uses. In this paper I look at som e rhetorical work done by Maynard Smith and his co-author G.R. Price t o make game theory a standard and common modelling tool for the evolut ionary study of behavior. The original presentation of the ideas - in a 1973 Nature article - is frequently cited but almost certainly rarel y read. It took reformulation of the approach to create a usable model and an object of study. Perhaps paradoxically, the new model dealt wi th more abstract objects than did its predecessor, but because of that a better case could be made for its realism. The particular strategy of abstraction allowed game-theoretic modelling to gain a certain meas ure of autonomy from empirical problems, and thus to nourish.