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EVOLUTION'S ARROW John Stewart Without resorting to teleology, Evolution's Arrow demonstrates that the evolution of life is directional and progressive, and that evolution moves in the direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and evolvability. The book founds this position on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It argues that existing approaches to the evolution of cooperation are inadequate. They are unable to account for the evolution that has organised molecular processes into cells, cells into organisms, and organisms (including humans) into societies. The new theory subsumes the narrower 'selfish-gene' perspective, and shows that self-interest at the level of the individual does not stand in the way of progress toward cooperation over wider and wider scales. Evolution progresses when it finds ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested components. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 develop this new theory, and Chapters 13, 14 and 15 apply it to the evolution of life on earth, including human evolution. Evolution's Arrow also argues that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover the best adaptations. And it has discovered new and better mechanisms. The book looks at the evolution of pre-genetic, genetic, cultural, and supra-individual evolutionary mechanisms. And it shows that the genetic mechanism is not entirely blind and random. Evolution's Arrow goes on to use an understanding of the direction of evolution and of the mechanisms that drive it to identify the next great steps in the evolution of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue to be successful in evolutionary terms. It shows how we must change our societies to increase their scale and evolvability, and how we must change ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms that are able to adapt in whatever ways are necessary for future evolutionary success, unfettered by their biological or social past. Two critical steps will be the emergence of a highly evolvable, unified and cooperative planetary organisation that is able to adapt as a coherent whole, and the emergence of evolutionary warriors - individuals who are conscious of the direction of evolution, and who use their evolutionary consciousness to promote and enhance the evolutionary success of humanity.
The international journal Complexity has recently published a favourable review of Evolution's Arrow as part of a review of five other books that deal with the evolution of new levels of complexity. The review identifies where the new theory of the evolution of cooperation developed in the book goes beyond the work of Maynard Smith and Szathmary. A copy of the review can be found at: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Review_Complexity.pdf |
