After receiving uniformly favorable – even glowing – reviews of my 2003 book, Nature’s Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind (Cambridge University Press), including high praise for the underlying theory from one of the most outstanding evolutionary biologists of the 20th century (John Maynard Smith), I was surprised, to put it mildly, when biologist David Sloan Wilson gave me a nasty, dismissive review in the on-line journal Evolutionary Psychology.
Wilson assured his readers that he was my friend (you know the old saying, “with friends like these…”) and that he only wanted to rescue me from my misguided ambitions. Indeed, I had just recently published an enthusiastic review of Wilson’s own book, Darwin’s Cathedral, in the Skeptic magazine. So it was puzzling and inexplicable for someone of his caliber and accomplishments in evolutionary theory to so completely misunderstand and misrepresent my theory, whether he agreed with it or not. He warned everyone to “beware” of it as “a theory of everything” and belittled the ways in which I had suggested that the theory could be tested.
Of course, it is not a theory of everything. The “Synergism Hypothesis” is a theory specifically about the “progressive” evolution of complexity in nature, and in human societies, a theory first proposed in 1983 as an explicit, Darwinian (bioeconomic) alternative to the various proposed “laws” of evolution that have been advanced over the years by the so-called complexity school – from Herbert Spencer to Ilya Prigogine to Stuart Kauffman and beyond. The theory explains this important evolutionary trend in terms of a common underlying principle – the principle of functional synergy.
In fact this theory is very similar in character to Darwin’s theory. Natural selection, after all, is not a “mechanism” but an “umbrella term” that is used to characterize a certain distinctive property of the evolutionary process, namely the differential survival and reproduction (or “selection”) of different forms as a result of their functional interactions (adaptations) both internally and with their environments. It is really a theory about the trans-generational consequences of these functional interactions, though the precise causes are in every case situation-specific and infinitely varied.
In the same manner, the Synergism Hypothesis is an umbrella term that singles out a subset of the relationships that are ubiquitous in nature, namely those that produce functional synergies which have consequences for differential survival and reproduction. The thesis, then, is that synergies of various kinds have been the underlying causes of the “progressive” trend in evolution toward more complex systems, in the same sense that natural selection is a causal theory of evolution more generally. Moreover, this dynamic can also be applied to the uniquely “progressive” aspect of cultural evolution in humankind. (Needless to say, I define “progressive” in strictly functional, not normative terms.)
Among the various implications of this theory is a directive that we must focus our attention, not on genes pursuing their individual agendas in isolation from one another but on “wholes” (systems) and the relationships among them, which are inescapable features of the living world. The theory also sensitizes us to the interdependencies that are everywhere in evidence, and it helps us to identify the commonalities and differences, as well as the advantages and vulnerabilities, that are associated with these relationships. In various recent writings I have also discussed the many different kinds of synergy, as well as various qualitative aspects of synergistic phenomena, along with describing various ways of testing for synergy in any given relationship.
So, I can only hope that David Sloan Wilson will ultimately come to recognize that this theory has its uses. But then, I’m also mindful of the fact that, almost 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin’s theory is still hotly debated. Alas.
Thought for the day: “The tipping point;” the “perfect storm;” “the straw that broke the camel’s back;” the “bingo effect.” All are variations on the synergy theme – when more (or less) is radically different. In other words, the whole is very often not “greater than the sum of its parts,” just different.
An Introduction
In his path-breaking book, Beyond Reductionism (1969), the famed novelist and polymath Arthur Koestler remarked that "true innovation occurs when things are put together for the first time that had been separate." He was talking about synergy, of course, a phenomenon that is still greatly underrated and vastly more important even than Koestler imagined. I call it "nature's magic."
Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
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Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
__________________________________________________
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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5 comments:
It is a pity how, like shamelessly aspiring Clergymen, fellow intellectuals and 'Darwinists' can dismiss one another in public and then immediately insist that they are 'friends' later on in the same article.
I am not a Darwinist, at all. Although I only have Bachelor's of Science Degree, I have become thoroughly convinced that the fossil record does not provide nearly enough evidence for Darwin's key theory of slow, incremental PHYSICAL adaptation over the course of thousands, if not millions of years. Common sense dictates that there would already be countless numbers of intermediate (or between species) fossils found and studied throughout the world. Taken literally, Darwinism would result in so much dead, and living, evidence, that today's scientists would already be studying species change right now! This is why there are thousands of cat and dog breeds, but no 'new' species of cat/dog or dog/cats. In reality, there are basically no archeological records of those sorts of occurrences anywhere at all.
Yes, I know about impossibility of the 'odd monster' hypothesis, and the scorn and ridicule that scientists have had concerning the God 'of the gaps'. Nonetheless, there has yet to be any clear, convincing archeological patterns of incremental evolution into completely different 'species', none. Because of this, Darwinism is clearly wrong by the physical record as it stands now.
I do believe in evolution. In many ways, it is a fact of life, just like the winter cold I have right now (from germs that keep evolving past my immune defenses). Anyway, I think the nearly universal truth that even very closely related species simply cannot reproduce with one another (thus resulting in hybrids) speaks volumes about the still mysterious, unexplained diversity of species found throughout the natural world. Clearly, something else is going on. May the LORD God bless you in the name of St. Judas Maccabaeus.
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