"Nature exists as a nested hierarchy of units, and the process of natural selection operates at multiple levels of the hierarchy."

"Well into my procreating years I am, so far, voluntarily childless, having squandered my biological resources reading and writing, doing research, helping out friends and students, and jogging in circles, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser, not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of Queer Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake."

Yet Darwinism is also one of the most heavily criticized scientific theories of all time. Part of the reason for this, of course, is that it directly contradicts Literalist interpretations of the Bible, and thus is incompatible with fundamentalist religions. When one adds to this the problem that no theory of evolution, unlike most other scientific theories, can be subjected to direct experimental tests, but must rely largely on field data, much of which is difficult to interpret, it's not surprising that a sizeable minority of even fairly well-educated people have no problem refusing to accept Darwinism. The laws of physics are proven in untold forms of technology that we all use and depend on; much of biology is confirmed by modern medicine. But modern evolutionary theory has no practical applications; there are no life-and-death consequences for those refusing to accept it..

But the problem with Darwinism goes further and deeper than this. There are many highly intelligent and educated people who accept evolution as a fact of existence, yet remain skeptical that Darwinism can explain very much of it (Taylor 1983; Lima-de-Faria 1988; Kauffman 1993; Behe 1996). Their numbers include many scientists who work in areas outside of biology, and particularly those who accept a holarchical view of existence, a worldview somewhat along the lines of the one presented in this book. Their discontent is quite understandable. Most simply put, any holarchy, any arrangement of things in which some are higher than others, must have some driving force that creates higher from lower--something that provides evoution with a sense of direction--and Darwinism does not seem to provide such a force, such direction--at least not one powerful enough to drive evolution up level after level of existence.

This is a point, incidentally, on which some supporters as well as critics of Darwinism agree. And having agreed, they then part company. Believers in modern evolutionary theory may have no problem with its apparent inability to explain how higher is created from lower, because sometimes they seem not to accept that there is higher and lower in the first place. Not atypical is this statement from two evolutionary biologists:

But never fear--if the authors are correct, we should give their statement no more significance than the squeaking of bats.

Many holarchical critics of modern evolutionary theory, on the other hand, have decided they can do very well without it. Darwinism, sniffs Ken Wilber--a transpersonal philospher who spends much of his time pointing out the fallacies in New Age ideas--can explain nothing more than the emergence of relatively minor differences among species (Wilber 1989). This is what evolutionary biologists refer to as "microevolution", and what I described in the previous chapter as diversification.

Many theorists believe a large part of the answer to evolution may be found in theories of self-organization, which demonstrate how large changes in the arrangement of physical, biological or social components can occur rapidly and more or less spontaneously. In the following chapter, I will be examining some of these theories. Before we give up on Darwinism, though--our first and some would say still the only unifying theory of biology-- we ought to be certain that we have taken it to its limits. A major lesson we seem to have learned from about four hundred years of science is that well-established theories usually don't die; they become co-opted into newer theories. Newtonian physics gave way to relativity theory and quantum mechanics, but did not cease to be very useful, and not for a small portion of our existence, either. Pasteur's germ theory of disease has been superseded in many areas by a new appreciation of the multifactorial nature of health--its genetic, mental, and social and environmental factors; but we still vaccinate children, prescribe antibiotics, and most important of all, practice sanitation. Freud is under attack from all directions today--but no one questions the existence of the unconscious, and its enormous influence on some behavior in some people.

In the case of Darwinism, the evolutionary events that everyone concedes it does explain are so universal, and have occurred over such an immense length of time, that it seems unlikely that it's just one odd piece in a much more complex puzzle. If random variation and natural selection operate at one level or phase of evolution, we ought to ask why other phases should be governed by totally different principles. This is the basic question that we will be exploring in this chapter. What I propose to do is show that a broader, more generalized version of Darwinism--one retaining the key concepts of random variation and natural selection, but interpreting these in multiple ways--has the potential to explain far more of evolution than the current "synthetic" theory of evolution that is supported by most Darwinists today. I will begin with a brief discussion of the latter, indicating some of its limitations.

Darwin's original theory of evolution contained two key concepts that are now familiar to most educated people: random variation and natural selection. Organisms from time to time are born with some variation that distinguishes them from others of their species. If this variation gives these individuals a survival advantage, or any other advantage allowing them to reproduce more often or in greater numbers than their peers, the variation becomes established in the species. If enough such variations accumulate in a species, a new species may result.

In this century, Darwin's theory was modified as a result of several new discoveries and concepts. The modern theory of evolution is usually referred to as "synthetic theory", meaning that it represent a synthesis of Darwin's original version with these newer discoveries (Stebbins 1983; Ridley 1996). Two major revisions in particular have occurred. First, as a result of discoveries in molecular biology, we now recognize that heritable variations in organisms result from mutations in genes, which are portions of DNA molecules contained in all cells of the body. Second, observations of populations of organisms, together with mathematical analysis, have provided a more detailed understanding of how gene mutations become established in populations, and the conditions under which they may result in the emergence of new species.

Synthetic theory, like the very process it would understand, is still changing as more information accumulates about both genes and populations of organisms. There is still a vigorous debate over such issues as the tempo or pace of evolutionary change (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gould 1982; Rhodes 1983; Gould and Eldredge 1993; Eldredge 1995); the application of the theory to animal behavior (Wilson 1980; Dawkins 1982; Maynard Smith 1982; Dennett 1995; Blackmore 1999); the role of neutral mutations in evolution (Kimura 1983; Ohta 1997); the role of mutations that affect embryonic development (Gould 1977a; Maynard Smith et al. 1995; Raff 1996; Depew and Weber 1997); and the possibility that natural selection may operate on other level, such as the species, rather than the individual organism (Salthe 1985; Mayr 1988; Eldredge 1992; Gould 1998; Brandon 1998; Sober and Wilson 1998). However, such debates are for the most part in-house, taking place among a group of scientists who mostly accept the basic outlines of synthetic theory.

Why, then, is Darwinism rejected by many thinkers not in this group as a sufficient explanation of evolution? By far the most common criticism levelled against Darwinism is that it can't account for major changes. This is commonly referred to as macroevolution; in holarchical terms, it includes the processes of both transformation and transcendence. Almost everyone accepts that new species can result from random variation and natural selection. After all, human beings have for thousands of years used a basically similar process to breed new lines of domestic plants and animals. The difference between one breed and another, though, or between one species and another of the same genus (e.g., between a wolf and a fox, or between two kinds of wasps) is relatively slight. There are many instances of evolution where much larger changes have occurred.

An organ often cited by critics is the vertebrate eye, with its intimate architecture of iris, lens, fluid and retina. According to modern evolutionary theory, the eye as we know it today must have evolved through a long series of intermediate stages, each separated from its predecessors by one or a few mutations. Furthermore, each one of these stages must have been superior to the preceding stage--that is, provided the organism with a survival advantage--or at the very least, was no less useful than its predecessor. But given the intricate relationships among all the different components of the eye that are necessary for it to work, it's hard to understand--in the view of some critics, at any rate--how such postulated intermediate stages could have functioned. Darwin himself, while not doubting the power of his theory to explain evolution of the eye, paid tribute to the difficulty of the problem:

A possible explanatory scheme for the evolution of the eye has recently been proposed (Nilsson and Pelger 1994), and even if it proves not to be correct, it doesn't mean that there is no explanation--that natural selection can't explain the emergence of this organ. But evolution of the brain, mind and consciousness pose even more difficult problems for Darwinism. Consider our well-known mental abilities, such as logical thought. It's very well-established that these abilities unfold in the developing child in a series of fairly distinct stages (Loevinger 1997; Piaget 1992; Wilber 1980). A somewhat similar developmental path seems to have occurred during evolution (Wilber 1981). Thus the highest mental abilities that most people are capable of expressing today are several stages beyond those of people of several thousand years ago. These abilities are of course vital to the development and stability of the complex social systems we now live in. Yet the evolutionary evidence also demonstrates that the modern human brain capable of these higher mental abilities evolved more than fifty thousand years ago (Cockburn 1991; Strickberger 1996). Thus it seems that a great deal of our mental potential evolved many thousands of years before it was actually used. How can mere potential evolve by natural selection? If mental abilities are not used, how can the type of brain that gives rise to them be selected?

Consciousness is perhaps the most difficult of all features to explain in Darwinian terms. As I discussed in Chapter 5, the relationship of brain to consciousness is not only not understood, but some theorists argue that we never will be able to understand it. If so, then we will never be able to explain the origins of consciousness by random mutation and natural selection, which operate on physical and biological processes. Furthermore, if one accepts the logical possibility of zombies, human-like creatures with all our mental functions yet lacking in consciousness, then the latter could have had no selective value. As I discussed in Chapter 6, this is another powerful argument against Darwinism as an explanatory theory for consciousness.

There are still other evolutionary transitions that Darwinism so far has not only not been able to explain, but traditionally doesn't even address. Darwin's best known book was titled The Origin of Species. The theory was concerned only with how different types of plants and animals evolved. It did not deal with evolutionary events prior to this period, that is, the evolution of cells and the first multicellular organisms. As biochemist Michael Behe (1996) points out, despite an enormous amount of effort by evolutionists to explain the evolution of cells, the complex and detailed organization of these earliest reproducing holons remains far beyond our understanding.

In this chapter, I will address some of these current limitations of Darwinism. I will argue that a broader form of this theory, which retains the key principles of random variation and natural selection, has the power at least to contribute to our understanding of evolution at all levels of existence--not simply the evolution of species. I will not argue that this is a complete theory, that there are no other evolutionary processes involved, but I will argue that Darwinism, understood in this sense, is virtually ubiquitous in time and space. I will begin by applying the approach I call holon substitution. As I discussed this approach in Chapter 7, this will involve restating modern evolutionary theory in terms of the holarchy, and then attempting to generalize it to other levels of existence by substituting terms on one level with the equivalent terms of another level.

The basic principles of Darwinian evolution, therefore, are retained at the level of the cell. In fact, we could say that evolution at this level is a purer form of Darwinism, because the two key processes of mutation and selection interact more directly. Evolution at the level of the organism is somewhat complicated by two factors that intervene between mutation and selection. First, organisms do not, of course, reproduce by dividing themselves like cells; they instead produce special reproductive cells, or gametes, which later develop into a new organism. Ordinarily, only mutations in these gametes are transmitted to the organism's descendants. And second, the path connecting the mutation in the gene to the variation in the organism is very complex, since it in effect must traverse two levels of existence. First, it must result in some variation in cells; then in various higher stages of these cells; and finally in the organism itself.

For this reason, I propose to use Darwinian evolution at the level of the cell as the core theory to apply to the holarchy. That is to say, in attempting to generalize Darwinism to other types of evolutionary processes, we will take as its basic description the form in which it applies to its cell. This can be stated as follows:

What I now propose to do is subject this statement to the process of holon substutition. First, we re-state the theory in terms of the holarchy; then we substitute for terms that represent one level of existence with those that represent another.

Here is how we would restate the theory in terms of the holarchy:

Now we will repeat this statement, substituting for all terms that refer to a specific level of the holarchy other terms (underlined) that refer to equivalent holons on the next higher level:

Does this statement actually describe a known evolutionary process? Yes--more or less--and it is otherwise known as cultural evolution. Cultural evolution results from a behavioral change in organisms--usually, but probably not always, human beings--which is then transmitted to succeeding generations through learning. Though cultural evolution is distinct from what is commonly referred to as biological evolution, the former does have a definite biological component. The initial variation or "mutation"--a new idea, a new way of looking at or doing something--is presumably a change in the pattern of connections between certain neurons in the brain (Dawkins 1976). This pattern is what is transmitted when other organisms learn it, and is what eventually becomes established in the population.

At this point, an evolutionary biologist is likely to object that the analogy between cultural evolution and Darwinian evolution is imperfect. In Darwinian evolution (at the cellular level) the unit of reproduction is the cell; a change occurs in the genes of the cell, and the cell transmits the genetic change to succeeding generations by reproducing itself. If the analogy with a higher level is to be complete, it would seem that the organism should be the real unit of reproduction--just as was stated in the substituted form of the theory I presented above. For the organism is to its level of existence what the cell is to its.

In cultural evolution, however, the unit of reproduction is not the organism. For the selection of the new behavior does not depend on organisms which exhibit this behavior reproducing themselves more succesfully than organisms without the behavior. Rather, the behavior itself seems to be reproduced; the competition is between the new form of behavior and some earlier form that it replaced. Thus if I have a new idea, and succeed in transmitting this idea to the rest of society, I do not reproduce myself. Rather, the idea reproduces itself. We could also say that part of my biological organization reproduces itself.

Cultural evolution then, is not truly analogous to Darwinian evolution on the cellular level, because the units of reproduction on the two levels are not equivalent. But what exactly is the unit of reproduction in cultural evolution? A moment ago, I said it was the idea, or some other mental product. The biologist Richard Dawkins (1976) coined the word "meme" to describe this class of phenomena. But like everything else, this term can be expressed more precisely in terms of some kind of holon. In Chapter 4, we saw that ideas and other mental phenomena represent higher-order holons--that is, groups and other forms of social organization--as we see them from our position in the holarchy. Therefore, it follows that in cultural evolution, the unit of reproduction is the group. What is actually being reproduced, and in this way being transmitted, is a new set of interactions between individuals.

I hasten to add that when I say the unit of selection is the group, I'm using the term "group" in a somewhat different sense from its conventional meaning among evolutionary biologists. Group selection ordinarily refers to another evolutionary process that I will discuss later. My point here is simply that transmission and selection of memes, by strengthening certain types of interactions among individuals, contributes to the evolution of groups or societies. This process, as I will argue later, is actually the first step in what is conventionally called group selection. It creates, or modifies, a group which can then subsequently be subjected to selection.

We can see this role of memes very clearly with language, which is often cited as an example of a phenomenon that emerges through a process of cultural evolution. Language is a means of communication between individuals, and thus alters the way the individuals interact. Therefore, when a language emerges among a group of people, and is transmitted from generation to generation, we can say that a particular way of communicating, or a particular kind of social organization, is also being transmitted.

This is an extremely significant point, for when social interactions among individuals evolve, as well as the individuals themselves, we may no longer be dealing purely with diversification processes. We may also be dealing with transformative processes, that is, the evolutionary events that result in the emergence of higher stages within a level of existence. I say may be, for cultural evolution, defined in the precise way that I'm using it here, may simply result in diversification of a social holon; it may, for example, change the properties of a social group, without changing its complexity. Even if this is the case, however, such diversity, as we have seen earlier, may contribute to transformation by creating holons that are more capable of associating with each other into higher-order holons.

To summarize the discussion so far, we have used the process of holon substitution to identify an analog of Darwinian evolution on our level of existence, a process usually called cultural evolution. The analogy, however, is not perfect, because the units of selection in the two processes are not analogous. In one case, it's the individual, that is, a fundamental holon (cell or organism) that is selected; in the other, it's interactions between these fundamental holons that are selected. In an effort to develop a unified theory that can encompass both types of processes, let's examine the distinction between biological and cultural evolution in more detail.

The first point to make is that in each case, changes in an informational holon are involved. In biological evolution, the informational holon that changes is the genome; random mutations occur in genes, some of which are selected. In cultural evolution, the informational holon that changes is the brain; random variations occur in neuronal connections, some of which are selected. As I discussed in Part I, however, the genome and the brain are analogous holons; the brain plays the same role on its level as the genome does on its level. So to the extent that biological and cultural evolution involve changes in these holons, these two kinds of evolutionary processes can be considered analogous.

There is a second difference between biological and cultural evolution, however, which is the source of the lack of complete analogy between the two processes. Recall the earlier discussion in Chapter 3 about deep and surface structures. Every cell in the body contains all the genetic information that every other cell contains. The sum total of all this genetic information is the genome's deep structure. But cells in different parts of the body differ according to which genes they express. The particular pattern of genes expressed by any given cell represents its genetic surface structure. Likewise, the brain has the potential to perform many kinds of behavior, rooted in the relatively gross, hard-wired anatomy of the brain. This is its deep structure, and is common to all members of a given species. But different members of the same species may express different forms of behavior (and one individual may express different forms of behavior at different times), and this represents the brain's surface structure.

Biological and cultural evolution are thus analogous in the sense that both involve changes in an informational holon; indeed, I will argue that all evolution of any kind involves such changes. Biological and cultural evolution fundamentally differ, on the other hand, in that in one case the deep structure of the informational holon changes, while in the other case the surface structure changes. In addition to pointing the way towards a broader form of Darwinism that can accomodate both types of evolutionary processes, this distinction, as we shall see later, will help us identify still other evolutionary processes. That is, we will see that on any level of existence, either the deep or the surface structure of the informational holon of that level can change, and depending on which does change, a different kind of evolutionary process results.

For now, however, let's continue the process of "holon substitution" that we began above. Let us take our original formulation of Darwinian evolution, stated in holarchical terms, and change the terms again, this time by not one level of existence, but by two:

What sort of evolutionary process would this be? Changes in people result in changes in society which change some higher level of existence. Does it make any sense?

Think of a large organization, such as a corporation or a nation, in which a leadership change occurs. A person in position of power dies, or retires, or through some other chance event is removed or transferred from that position. This results in a signficant change in the entire organization, affecting in turn the entire organization of humanity on earth.

If this sounds far-fetched, think of the assassination of John Kennedy, and all the consequences that followed it. Or the death of Martin Luther King. It is, of course, quite rare that the death or replacement of a person has a major impact on the entire earth, but that is just what we would expect. Most mutations in genes have no impact on the cell or the organism--and of those few that do, most have a negative effect and are selected out. Likewise, most changes in human behavior do not result in new social patterns. An essential element of Darwinian theory is that variation is not only random but rare.

Our ability to fully accept that this kind of process might actually occur is of course hampered by our lack of understanding of what a higher level of existence would be like. Even less can we imagine how such a holon might be competing with other holons of a similar nature. We are really talking about a hypothetical time far in the future when we might be aware of many other planets with advanced civilizations, all of them in some sense competing. The survivors would propagate their kind, until one portion of the universe, say the galaxy, contained only civilizations of one type.

We do not really have to accept such a far-our scenario, however. The important point is simply that such changes in higher forms of social organization can and do occur, and regardless of what impact they might have on some hypothetical higher level of existence, they definitely can have impact on us. There have unquestionably been points in history when a transition involving a single human being affected societies throughout the earth, and through them, affected the way almost all individuals live.

So we can conclude that in addition to biological evolution and cultural evolution, there is a third process that I call transcultural or planetary evolution. This process is just as distinct from the other two as the latter are from each other. While biological evolution is initiated by changes in genes, and cultural evolution by changes in brains, transcultural evolution is initiated by changes in societies. Each process can change individual human beings: biological evolution by creating a different genetic makeup; cultural evolution by creating a different brain organization; and transcultural evolution by creating different relationships between the individual and other individuals. In the final analysis, however, all three evolutionary processes involve changes in the physical, biological and mental aspects of human beings.

Having seen that a generalized version of Darwinism can account for at least some evolution of the higher, social stages of the mental level, we would next like to know whether this theory can in similar fashion account for social stage evolution on other levels of existence. For example, is the same basic process involved in the association of cells into multicellular holons, the predecessors of the first organisms? This is not a question we can address by appealing to any evidence, because this phase of evolution occurred more than 600 million years ago, and left no traces in the fossil record. Eukaryotic cells have no hard parts that could make an imprint on this record.

Evolution of multicellular organisms presumably began after a diversification period in which many different kinds of eukaryotic cells evolved. The question now is, given the emergence of cells such as these, what was the actual process by which they began to combine with one another into higher stages? Again we can profit by comparing the process of forming multicellular organisms with the analogous process on the next higher level of existence, the process of forming societies of organisms. We just saw that an important factor in the latter is cultural evolution, which can be fundamentally understood as a Darwinian process involving random variation of brain organization (new ideas) and natural selection of certain social interactions correlated with that organization. Can we identify a completely analogous process on the biological level?

We saw earlier that the key difference between biological and cultural evolution is that one involves a change in the deep structure of an informational holon, while the other follows changes in surface structure of an analogous holon. Thus if we wish to find a true analog of cultural evolution on the cellular level--a process that might have played a role in the emergence of multicellular organisms from cells, just as societies emerged from human beings--we need to consider a process involving a change in the surface structure of the genome, rather than its deep structure. A change in the genome's deep structure is represented by genetic mutation, and we have already seen that this kind of process probably accounts for the diversification of cells, prior to the emergence of organisms. A change in the genome's surface structure, in contrast, would involve a change in the way cells expressed their genes.

As a result of this changed expression pattern, the cell's interaction with another cell or cells is altered. Perhaps they associate more closely, for example, or perhaps they associate in a different physical shape or pattern. This step, again, is analogous to cultural evolution, where a new idea results in a change in the interaction between individuals. As a result of this new interaction, the other cell or cells also change their pattern of expression so that it matches that of the original cell--just as one individual learns a new idea from another. These cells, too, can now transmit the new expression pattern to other cells. As a result, a large number of cells now exhibit an altered expression pattern, and a significant change in the way they associate is possible.

In summary, we now have identified two kinds of evolutionary processes, both of them fundamentally Darwinian in nature, and both of which are exhibited in analogous ways, on both the biological and mental levels of existence. What is commonly called biological evolution, but what in holarchical terms would better be called fundamental stage evolution, results in diversification of cells or organisms. It begins with a change in the deep structure of the genome or the brain, which is transmitted by reproduction of the fundamental stage system. What is commonly called cultural evolution, but what I will call here social stage evolution, contributes to the emergence of groups of individual cells or organisms. It begins with a change in the surface structure of the genome or the brain, and is transmitted by reproduction of certain kinds of social interactions between fundamental stage systems.

Furthermore, each of these evolutionary processes may have a higher-level analog, which I call transcultural evolution. In this process, a very highly developed social structure is the initial locus of change, which hypothetically would be transmitted through reproduction of a higher level of existence. While we can only speculate on the true extent of analogy of transcultural evolution with evolutionary processes on lower levels, the process, as it affects human beings, seems to be real. As with evolution on the lower levels, it may have two forms, one involving changes in the deep structure of the society (reflected in the ways in which human beings are potentially able to interact), and one in the surface structure (the ways in which they actually do interact).

The perceptive reader may have noted something missing from the preceding discussion. I have argued that every level of existence has its own informational holon, and that evolution can occur through changes in either the deep structure or the surface structure of that holon. To illustrate this, I provided examples of evolution through changes in the deep structure of the genome, and of evolution through changes in the surface structure of either the genome or the brain. But what about evolution through changes in the deep structure of other informational holons, such as the brain? The holarchical model developed here predicts that this kind of evolution should occur, and that moreover, it should take place independently of genetic changes. That is, just as what is commonly called cultural evolution--changes in the surface structure of the brain--can proceed without any changes in the genome (deep or surface), so should changes in the actual hard-wired anatomy of the human brain. At a certain stage in evolution, human brains should be capable of reproducing themselves directly, free from the control of the genome.

Can we see any evidence of this happening? Of course we can--we just aren't used to describing what is happening in these terms. The creation of computers by human beings is the infant stage of human brain reproduction. A computer is a very primitive--maybe, by now, not always so primitive--brain, one which is created directly by the mental level of existence. This does not mean the lower levels are dispensed with. The construction of any computer requires physical matter, and I believe it very likely that the advanced computers of the future will also make use of biological materials, so that they can be reproduced more quickly and cheaply. We may eventually even combine our ability to clone organisms, on the one hand, with computer technology, on the other, to create biological organisms like ourselves with a greatly enhanced variety of mental functions.

The essential point, though, is that the reproduction process that this represents in effect bypasses the genome. The brain, not the genome, controls the process. This is true not only when we create computers through assembly of physical materials, but even for gene cloning. When we clone another organism, including another human being, we may be constrained by the limits of the genome, but we are no longer controlled by them, in the sense that natural, biological reproduction of an organism is controlled by its genes. The survival of the organism no longer depends, except in a very general sense, on its genes; it depends on its brain. For almost any set of genes that can support a brain will do. The function of that brain will determine whether that brain reproduces itself. If that brain has a useful function--useful as determined by the context of society in which it finds itself--it will survive and reproduce. This is what I call direct reproduction of the human brain.

Like reproduction of the genome, reproduction of the brain can also be subject to Darwinian evolution. Brains which are fitter according to some set of criteria will be more likely to survive and reproduce themselves. It must be kept in mind, though, that survival here means not physical or biological survival, but mental survival. A human-made form of intelligence may be capable of a very long period of survival, perhaps an indefinite period; but whether it reproduces itself will depend not on how long it survives, but its particular functions. There are computers today that have physically survived for ten or twenty years, and in the future there may be computers that survive biologically for as long or as longer. But unless they reproduce themselves--by themselves, or with the aid of human beings--they will not be subject to evolution. And they will not reproduce themselves unless they are fit in some sense.

To some, creation of computers by humans may seem only weakly analogous with the genome reproducing itself. The latter process is "natural", while the former is not. But in the holarchical view, it should be obvious by now, what we call natural is sheerly a matter of perspective. It really means "the way life used to be". To an autonomous atom, there would be nothing natural about a cell; a cell provides an environment totally unlike the world the atom originated in. Likewise, with the relationship of an organism to a cell. Each level of existence is, in some ways, so radically different from what came before it that it must appear unnatural in the latter's terms.

The key point is that when human beings attempt to create minds like their own, they are engaging in reproduction of their informational holons, just as cells, by duplicating their DNA, reproduced their informational holons. When modern cells reproduce their DNA, they also reproduce a physical organization in which the DNA is embedded. The holarchical view developed here predicts that the same will be eventually be true of reproducing minds. That is, computers (if we can still call them that) will evolve which reproduce certain mental functions along with a physical and biological structure in which these functions are imbedded. In the transitional state in which we now find ourselves, however, in which reproduction of minds is imperfect and very rapidly changing, this does not have to be the case.

Does this view of mental reproduction endorse the idea that consciousness emerged from below? Not necessarily. That human beings can or someday will be able to reproduce themselves mentally does not mean that the products of this reproduction will experience consciousness in the hard problem sense discussed in Chapter 5. But they might. For even if we adopt the view that consciousness has always existed, and that through evolution we participate more fully in it, then our mental creations might do so, too. The discussion of the next section should help make this point.

We have seen that understanding that Darwinian processes can operate on different stages as well as levels of the holarchy may provide Darwinism with more explanatory power. The preceding discussion suggests that this power can help us predict, in a very general way, our future. The creation of information technology, while obviously a very complex process involving numerous social and economic factors, illustrates a Darwinian process, and can be explained to some extent according to Darwinian principles. Now let us turn this same broader Darwinian theory to a problem of the past: the evolution of consciousness (using this term somewhat loosely, as "degree of mentality"). As I emphasized in Part 1, many mental features that are loosely referred to as consciousness--excepting the hard problem--result from our participation in higher social stages. Thus to the extent that these social stages evolved by Darwinian processes, so might have our consciousness. Let's consider in more detail how this relationship might help explain one puzzling aspect of the evolution of consciousness.

This raises an obvious question: if primitive humans had the potential for, say, rational thought, why wasn't this potential manifested? Why did it take so many tens of thousands of years for this feature of consciousness to emerge? The usual answer to this question is that the our ancestors lacked the proper social environment needed for fulfillment of this potential. Ken Wilber says:

To illustrate the situation, let's compare a primitive human with a modern developing one. Theorists like Wilber (1981) and Jurgen Habermas (1978) argue that the stages of human evolution are grossly parallelled in the development of every modern child. From this it follows that a child at any level of development is somewhat like one of our ancestors at a particular level of evolution. This is probably somewhat of an oversimplification--a point I will return to later--but it helps us get a rough idea of the worldview of our ancestors. So, for example, if, following Wilber, we take people of tribal/village cultures of 10-20 thousand years ago to be representative of what he calls the magic stage of consciousness, they had a cognitive development (on the average) corresponding to a child of about four or five years of age. A characteristic of this stage of development/evolution is that the person believes that he controls events in the natural world around him. In the following stage, the mythic, the developing (age 6-8) or evolving (early nation state) human being replaces this view with one in which some authority figure (God or father) is in control.

So the question becomes: why can every modern child get past the magic stage, whereas the ancient tribal/villagers could not? Does a child really learn that she can't control the wind or the sun, for example, only because other people tell her she can't--or because, as her brain matures, and continues to accumulate information about the natural world, it becomes capable of making the rather elementary observations (to us adults) that disprove this notion? The consensus view of Wilber and others implies that the first explanation must be the correct one; if the latter explanation were correct, ancient people should have been able to get past the magic stage.

If we accept the consensus view, however, it appears that the brain evolved in such a way that it contained the potential to manifest many highly sophisticated qualities long before those qualities were actually manifested. The brain was capable of learning certain things about the world from other people when there were no people available to teach these lessons. How can Darwinism, which says that features evolve because they provide some immediate survival advantage, explain this? Indeed, how can any evolutionary theory explain the emergence of some organ that apparently is mostly unused? Alfred Wallace, who is usually given some of the credit with Darwin for the theory of evolution, was so puzzled by this problem that he, unlike Darwin, dismissed natural selection as the force creating the human mind:

To be sure, Darwinists have long been aware that certain features of an organism, adapted and selected for a particular purpose, may later prove to be adaptable for another purpose. For example, it's thought that feathers initially evolved as a means of thermoregulation. Only much later, when feathered organisms evolved appendages that enabled them to fly, did the utility of feathers for this new function become relevant, providing a further selective advantage for them. But how could such an argument be applied to the brain? What other function could the brain structures we now use for logical thought have originally fulfilled?

One possible answer to this question is that the modern brain of Homo sapiens initially evolved not because it was capable of manifesting the specific functions it has today, but simply because it had a very general ability to learn a variety of different kinds of behavior. A general ability to learn new behavior would obviously have given our ancestors an immediate survival advantage, and so this feature of the brain would have been selected. Over time, our ability to learn new types of behavior would have resulted in the acquisition of certain specific types of behavior that we now have, such as the ability to think logically. "Yes, the brain got big by natural selection," says Stephen Jay Gould.

The problem with this argument is that the modern child develops mentally in discrete stages. If the brain were simply a very general learning machine, one should observe different children learning very different abilities, and in different sequences, according to the differences in the details of their environment. But this is not what is observed. All children go through the same stages of mentality, in the same sequence, and at approximately the same ages (Wilber 1980; Piaget 1992). This observation very strongly implies that there are some fairly discrete structures that manifest these stages. And again, these structures must have existed unused for thousands of years.

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who describes volumes of recent studies demonstrating that the human brain is not a general purpose learning machine, argues that our ancestors actually used their brain in much the same way we do. In his view, logic, reason and abstraction have been part of the human currency for tens of thousands of years, even if only recently have they reached their highest development. Pinker tries to persuade us that this idea is not as far-fetched as it might seem:

The intellectual problems facing a forager (and one should keep in mind that all of the foragers available for study today are still far advanced from the earliest members of Homo sapiens) may or may not be more difficult than the kind of thinking we moderns do, but they are not the same problems. To trap a food animal, for example, one may need to be able to predict the animal's movements, and understand what attracts and repels it. These skills are surely distinguishable from the ability, say, to understand how diseases act, run a large business, or judge the ability of political candidates to implement certain policies.

So the evolution of human mentation is very difficult to understand, if we accept the view that the brain of primitive peoples contained all the potential for creating the higher mental functions of modern people. What about the alternative explanation, that the primitive brain really was different from the modern one, that no social environment would have enabled it to develop further? To my knowledge, no anthropologist, paleontologist or evolutionary biologist takes this idea seriously, but there really is no unassailable evidence against it. We know that people of less-developed cultures surviving today have the same biological brain that we have, but we don't have incontrovertible proof that the earliest members of our race did. Anthropologists assume this on the basis of similarities in the size and shape of the skull, but just because the brain of hominids of this time was as large as ours does not establish that it was anatomically the same. We have no fossil records of soft tissue.

To accept that the brain of what we call the first members of Homo sapiens was different from our own, however, would be to assert that this species was not in fact Homo sapiens. There must have been further genetic changes between this hominid and ourselves. This is really hard to swallow, because 50,000 years is a flick-of-the-eyelash in the evolution of even one very simple trait, let alone several distinct stages, each of which involved the emergence of new structures or arrangements in the brain. Even supposing such changes could have occurred, moreover, they would have been confined to one geographically isolated group of human beings where they began. The entire human race world-wide could not have followed such a path.

How then are we to explain the existence of stages in the development of human mentality? Recall the discussion in Chapter 4, when I argued that our inner processes like thinking represent our way of looking at higher-order holons, namely, the social groups that we belong to. When we look at lower-order holons below us, the physical and biological world, we experience them as being external to us. But when we look at higher-order holons above us, we perceive them as being internal to us.

These higher-order holons, because they are holarchically arranged, provide a sequence of structures--not internal anatomical structures in the brain, but external social structures that we perceive as events within the brain. As the developing child becomes aware, in turn, of each of these structures, it realizes a new stage of mentality. Every modern child in our culture passes through the same sequence, because it lives in more or less the same social environment. And while children of other cultures might not go through all the same stages, the ones they do realize tend to emerge in the same sequence, because the same rules of holarchical organization apply to all societies. Some societies may have more social stages than others, but all societies share the lowest stages. Differences between societies, in this sense, are simply that some societies have higher stages beyond these common lower ones.

If this notion seems difficult to grasp, perhaps it can best be illustrated with a holarchical analogy, an example from another level of existence. Cells in tissues and other multicellular organizations are analogous to societies of organisms, and nervous tissue is analogous to modern human societies. As discussed in Chapter 3, a nerve cell within the brain has the ability to experience the world in a more complex manner than an isolated cell, by virtue of its communicative connections with other cells. It may be physiologically identical to an isolated cell, but because it has numerous synaptic contacts on its surface, each of which may perturb it in a certain way, it can undergo changes of state that would be inpossible for the isolated cell.

In other words, what ancient and modern human beings have in common is the ability to perceive higher-order holons. This perceptual apparatus was what initially evolved 50-100,000 years ago. Just as the ancients' ability to see lower-order holons--other people's bodies, organisms, inanimate objects, everything composing the physical and biological worlds--was as developed as ours, so, at this time, was their ability to see higher-order holons. What has changed is the holons that are available to see. We see lower-order holons that the ancients never saw--cars, television, computers, and so on--because these holons didn't exist thousands of years ago. In the same way, we see higher-order holons that the ancients never saw--complex social organizations--because these, too, did not exist thousands of years ago. And the way we see them is through certain types of mental processes, one of which is logical thought.

Consider again the developing child moving beyond the magic stage. He's learning that he does not control the position of the moon, for example. How does he learn this? The key step, surely, is to appreciate that other people also see the moon as he does. If everyone is aware of the moon as he is, then obviously the moon can't be under his control. But how does the child learn that other people see the moon as he does? Because they tell him? Perhaps. But he could learn this simply from observing the way other people behave. By watching them move about, talk, perform various activities, interact with others, and so on.

As a child grows up, she is constantly observing the behavior of other people, and the people she sees are part of progressively higher-order social organizations. When very young, the child knows only her family. A little later she becomes aware of a local neighborhood or community, made up of many families. Still later, she realizes the neighborhood is part of a still larger society. Awareness of each social holon can emerge only after she is aware of the immediately lower stage. A child cannot be aware of a family as a social holon until she has some awareness of herself as distinct from others. She can't comprehend a neighborhood organization until she understands what a family is. She can't understand a still larger society until she appeciates a multi-family neighborhood. So it is that a definable sequence of developmental stages emerges. Awareness of each holon, in the holarchical view, is closely correlated with a particular stage in cognitive and other forms of development.

In conclusion, to the extent that Darwinian processes contributed to the evolution of human societies, they also could have contributed to the evolution of some aspects of human consciousness. An important implication of this conclusion is that there are no specific anatomical structures in the brain corresponding to the stages of cognitive and other types of development. The brain has a general capacity to integrate information about other people and their relationship to the self. At each new stage of development, a brain structure of some sort presumably forms, but this is not a hard-wired feature of the brain. It must be created through the formation of new connections among neurons.

This view may also provide us with a different perspective on the relationship of development to evolution. The argument I used above is based on the notion that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", that is, that developmental stages in modern organisms follow the evolutionary stages leading to these organisms. While there is often some truth to this view, it generally can't be taken too literally. In the case of human evolution, we surely wouldn't want to claim that people of ten or twenty thousand years ago were just like modern children four or five years old. Adults of ancient times must have been more mature in some respects than modern children, or they couldn't have survived.

Where they differed, surely, is with respect to all mental qualities not dependent on being associated with complex social groups. These would include, for example, a large amount of emotional behavior, as well as perception as conventionally defined, that is, the ability to see lower-order holons in the physical and biological world. Since these functions are not completely separate from cognitive abilities, the latter would also be somewhat more developed in ancient adults than modern children. While an ancient resident of a small tribe might not have been capable of logical thought, what thinking he was capable of would have been enhanced by a greater emotional maturity than a young child.

No discussion of Darwinism would be complete without addressing the question of group selection. I have described social stage evolution as a kind of group selection, but it clearly differs from what evolutionists usually mean by the term. In social stage evolution, what reproduces and is selected is a certain kind of connection between two or more individuals (fundamental holons such as cells or organisms). In conventional group selection, in contrast, an entire interacting set of organisms--a band of primitive Homo sapiens, for example, or a population of birds--competes with other groups composed of the same species. The entire group behaves the way a single individual does in the more conventional Darwinian selection process.

For a long time, group selection has been somewhat of a bete noire among evolutionists. Though in theory it might be the basis for the evolution of any kind of adaptation, it has traditionally been linked with altruism, that is, behavior by individuals that benefits other members of their species rather than themselves. Since traditional selection at the individual level implies that the only features that can be selected are those that directly benefit that individual--allow it to survive and reproduce better than other individuals--many evolutionists, beginning with Darwin, have speculated that altruism must have evolved through selection at the group level.

At first glance, this seems logical, since any behavior that helps other members of one's species should promote the welfare of an entire group composed of those members. It has been very difficult, however, to conceive of how this could actually occur in practice. Precisely because altruism benefits other individuals, it would seem not to be selected for. It is easy to show, for example, that in any group in which some members are altruistic and some are selfish, the latter will survive and reproduce in greater numbers (other things being equal), because they reap the benefits of altruism without paying the price. The result, in theory, is the eventual extinction of the altruistic trait.

Then about thirty years ago, a young graduate student named W.D. Hamilton showed that it was possible to explain many forms of altruistic behavior without apparently invoking group selection. A key to this breakthrough was recognizing that the ultimate beneficiary of natual selection is not the individual organism, but rather the genome. Any form of behavior by an organism that increases the chances of its genes surviving and reproducing should be selected for. What Hamilton demonstrated is that altruistic behavior that benefits closely related members of a species would often fill this bill, since relatives share certain genes (Hamilton 1964a,b). This type of evolutionary process is called kin selection.

Kin selection is now widely accepted as the explanation for the evolution of certain kinds of altruistic behavior in nature, for example, in social insects such as ants and bees. While it can't account for altruistic behavior in organisms that are not closely related, subsequent theoretical developments, such as game theory, were able to fill in this gap to some extent. Game theory, originally developed by mathematicians to predict how people in conflict might behave, was used by evolutionists to show how cooperative behavior between two or more completely unrelated individuals might evolve through a Darwinian process (Maynard Smith 1982). The general idea underlying this theory is that under some conditions, an individual receives a greater benefit to itself by acting cooperatively than selfishly.

These and other theoretical advances, coupled with the difficulty of developing plausible schemes of group selection, led many evolutionary biologists to reject the idea of group selection as a significant evolutionary factor. More recently, however, the idea has made something of a comeback. In Unto Others, the philosopher Elliot Sober and the biologist David Wilson (1998) have argued persuasively that group selection can occur under certain conditions. Though altruists are at a Darwinian disadvantage within any group, groups with a large proportion of altruists are at an advantage relative to those with fewer altruists. Thus such groups will grow faster than groups composed of more selfish individuals. Though altruists in any group will eventually go extinct if Darwinian selection is allowed to proceed, if the groups periodically disperse and reform, this inexorable extinction process can be foiled, and altruistic individuals can increase throughout the population.

How does group selection fit into the holarchical view of evolution discussed in this chapter? Sober and Wilson themselves admit it is not so much an alternative evolutionary theory or process as a different way of looking at Darwinian evolution. Group selection does not violate any principles of Darwinism, any more than kin selection does. Like the latter, it simply illustrates that Darwinian processes can lead to many interesting and perhaps counter-intuitive outcomes under certain conditions. The notion, however, is important not simply as an explanation of how certain forms of altruistic behavior may have emerged, but as a key dynamic in the evolution of groups themselves. In the holarchical view, what are called individuals or fundamental holons--cells and organisms--originally must have evolved as groups. Before cells, there were associations of molecules, and before organisms, there were associations of cells. So as Sober and Wilson note, there is not always a hard and fast line to be drawn between individuals and groups:

Group selection, then, can be viewed as a transitional process between the evolution of social stages and fundamental stages. Social stage evolution--driven, as we have seen, by random changes in the surface structure of the genome or the brain--results in the initial coalescence of fundamental holons into a group or society. Group selection, in the conventional sense as used by Sober and Wilson, then permits a competitive process resulting in the emergence of progressively fitter groups or societies. During this latter period, both deep and surface structures of informational holons may change. For example, the evolution of primitive multicellular organisms could have been driven by changes in both the deep and surface structure of the genome. Likewise, group selection of early members of Homo sapiens could have involved both genetic mutations and cultural evolution, that is, transmission of memes.

I have shown how a broader, more generalized version of Darwinism, one retaining the key concepts of random variation and natural selection but applying them with different meanings on multiple levels of existence, has the potential to account for a much wider variety of evolutionary processes than has usually been assumed. These different evolutionary processes are shown in Table 7 . While the existence of evolutionary processes at a level above our own must, of course, be considered speculative, the other evolutionary processes listed in Table 6 are all occurring now, or very likely have occurred in the past.

However, their analogies with Darwinian evolution have not been appreciated. This is particularly so with cultural evolution, which is generally accepted to be the most powerful and significant evolutionary force acting on our own species (Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981). Many if not most evolutionary biologists regard cultural evolution as either a completely distinct process with no relation to Darwinism, or as ultimately dependent on biological or genetic evolution.

Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most vocal members of the first group, notes that:

This is quite true, but as discussed earlier, the differences between cultural and biological evolution result from the fact that they operate on different aspects of the appropriate informational holon. What Gould calls biological evolution results from changes in the deep structure of the genome, while cultural evolution results from changes in the surface structure of the brain. A biological level analog of what is called cultural evolution, involving changes in the surface structure of the genome, would also result in transmission across lineages (in Gould's sense of the word--that is, fundamental holons with the same genetic deep structure but arising, in the short term, from different ancestors). This process, I suggested, could contribute significantly to the emergence of multicellular organisms, composed of cells with identical genomic deep structures and converging surface structures. Conversely, a change in the deep structure of the human brain--resulting from human beings creating computers that can reproduce themselves--could give rise to ever-diverging lineages. So the convergence/divergence distinction that Gould makes applies not to different levels of existence, but to different stages on any level. There is, so to speak, biological evolution (more accurately referred to as fundamental stage evolution) and cultural evolution (more accurately called social stage evolution) on every level of existence.

A similar argument can be made against other differences between biological and cultural evolution that have been pointed out, such as the fact that memes are not reproduced as accurately as are genes (Dawkins 1982; Dennett 1995; Blackmore 1999). Social stage evolution does not require as accurate a form of reproduction as fundamental stage evolution, because what is evolving in the former is new connectons among the same fundamental holons, rather than new fundamental holons themselves. Consider again the hypothetical evolutionary scenario of multicellular assembly I discussed earlier, in which changes in the surface structure of genes--that is, expression of different genes--allowed cells to form more stable contacts with each other. These changes in gene expression don't have to be reproduced faithfully for the evolution to proceed; all that is necessary is that the changes result in more stable cell-cell contacts. Anything that does this will increase the probability that the society of cells is reproduced.

A final, and most fundamental, argument that some critics of the Darwinian/cultural evolution analogy make is that random variation and natural selection play only a minor role in cultural evolution. "A complex meme does not arise from the retention of copying errors," insists Steven Pinker.

The other end of the spectrum of views on cultural vs. biological evolution is taken by those, like Lumsden and Wilson (1981), who argue that cultural evolution is completely dependent on gene evolution. In this scenario, any new cultural changes or memes evolve in close association with certain genes, and these memes survive if, and only if, they enhance the survival of the corresponding genes. As Richard Dawkins (1976) has pointed out, though, there is nothing in Darwinism that implies selection must be restricted to genes. Anything that can reproduce itself can become a unit of Darwinist selection if, in Dawkins' words, its reproduction exhibits fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Both Dawkins and several other theorists, moreover, have argued that the evolution of memes may not only proceed independently of genes, but in some cases may even oppose them--that is, result in the selection of organisms whose genes are less reproductively fit (Dennett 1995; Blackmore 1999). Blackmore, in particular, has built on the premise of independence to develop a theory of how our large brain, use of language and other characteristically human features may have evolved because they enhanced the spread of certain memes, rather than of genes.

The holarchical model I have adopted is not only consistent with this understanding of cultural evolution, allowing us to integrate it into a broader theory with biological evolution, but identifies several other evolutionary processes which are also fundamentally Darwinian in their character, even though genes are not the unit of selection. The generalized form retains the key original Darwinian concepts of random variation and natural selection. Variation, however, is seen to involve different processes on different levels. On the biological level, it's manifested as changes in genes or gene expression; on the cultural level as changes in brains or in connections among neurons in brains; on the transcultural level as new individual humans and social variation.

A major benefit of such a unification is that it allows us to develop and test theories on one level of existence where we have evidence, then apply them to other levels where we don't. Thus our extensive familarity with the evolution of human social organizations has led to the idea of cultural evolution; this idea then has application to the evolution of cells into organisms, for which there is no fossil record. Conversely, to the extent that we can understand the evolution of earlier levels of existence, such as the biological or the mental, we may be able to some extent to predict how the evolution of computers is related to the emergence of a postulated higher level of existence. I will discuss the latter question further later in this book.

If Darwinism can be made into a broader theory, however, is it any deeper? Do the processes described in this chapter make a better case for random variation and natural selection as the basis for transformation and transcendence? Can they result in the gradual accumulation and concentration of information in living things?

Nobody really knows. One of the most persistent arguments against Darwinism--one that unfortunately is used largely by Creationists to discredit not simply Darwinism in particular, but the very notion of evolution in general--is that no one has ever demonstrated the evolution of a higher form of life from a lower by Darwinian processes. That this can occur is an assumption based on a) the evidence from the fossil record that higher evolved from lower by some process; and b) the evidence from field studies that Darwinism can account for diversification, such as the evolution of two closely related species. These two pieces of evidence together are certainly substantial arguments that it was Darwinism all the way, but are they compelling? Isn't there room for a little doubt, for the possibility that some other theory of evolution might be operating? Isn't it cheating a little bit to assume that the best current explanation must be the only explanation? Yet far too often this is what Darwinists do. Thus Dennett, after describing a hypothetical evolutionary scenario suggested by Richard Dawkins, concedes:

Exactlly--when Dawkins postulates how some organism may have evolved, this is construed as further support for Darwinism, because Darwinism is assumed in the first place. Because--Dennett and Dawkins are certainly right here--no one has come up with a better theory of evolution (paraphrasing Winston Churchill, we might say that Darwinism is the worst of all possible theories of evolution, except for all the known alternatives), it therefore follows that Darwinism must be correct--even without the crucial direct evidence.

In some cases, moreover, even evolution itself is assumed with no direct evidence. Thus while the fossil record indicates that cells existed on earth several billion years ago, we have no such evidence pertaining to their evolution--that is, any record of intermediate forms--nor can we ever expect to, given that such forms would not be expected to be fossilized. While I personally accept that cells did evolve, I have at least a little sympathy for those who beg to differ. As I noted earlier, Michael Behe, one of Darwin's more intelligent and informed critics, argues, in effect, that scientists have had ample time to show how evolution of the cell occurred; having failed, they should accept what he believes is the only alternative explanation: intelligent design.

Intelligent design, on the other hand, has its own problems, which we will consider later. Furthermore, it's easy to underestimate the significance of the fact that evolution has had millions of years to work with. In that range of time, perhaps, combinations of events were possible that no human mind can really comprehend. Advances in computer programming such as genetic algorithms permit scientists to simulate evolutionary processes on the computer (Holland 1975; Mitchell 1996). Though these algorithms aren't powerful enough to model all the features of organic chemistry that would have had to come into play to create a cell, someday they could perhaps be used to test theories of prebiotic evolution. I do agree with Behe that if the cell evolved by a process of random variation and natural selection, it should be possible to develop a coherent description of the process--not in every detail, but in enough detail to be convincing--if we can find a way of dealing with the immense amount of time involved.

Perhaps, however, Darwinism is not the only answer. Perhaps there was a way life could skip thousands or millions of small steps, and take a giant leap into a higher dimension. That is the bold claim of another class of evolutionary theories, to which we now turn.

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