Edited by author 05-19-2001 10:50 PM
And now it appears that Teilhard de Chardin (or successors such as John Stewart) long ago thought through much of this. Here's my IRR post for reference:
I'm late coming to this thread, and have even lost the first post and link.
But WOW, what a discovery for me. Thanks very much to whomever posted the
first message on Teilhard de Chardin.
I've mulled over this idea of cooperation and specialization happening at
greater scales on my sorta-blog[1], so I'm excited to find that much greater
minds have thought this through long ago.
This T. de C. page [2] mentions a publication called Evolution's Arrow
that's derived from Teilhard de Chardin. It's amazingly close to my thoughts
and of course much more comprehensive.
I haven't read the T. de C. materials in any depth. Do they talk about
specialization as well as cooperation? I think that's important to the
evolution-as-aggregation process.
Here's the main part of my blog entry:
======
There's an evolutionary process that results in a new entity that's an
amalgamation of smaller-scale entities. On the grand scale, this formation
is much more significant than the adaptation of each individual entity
through natural selection. It's the appearance of a more complex, more
organized entity.
At some point, single-celled creatures "evolved into" higher forms of life
where each cell has a specialized function and coordinates closely with
other cells*. Does that same evolutionary process act on humans? As we
become more and more specialized in our work and more highly connected, are
we in fact forming larger-scale entities, or even a single global entity?
We can answer simply: yes, they're called societies and interest groups of
all scales. But I'd like to examine the process of social formation and
relate it to evolutionary processes. Evolutionary processes can be viewed as
the response of a reproducing organism to an environmental pressure that
causes its form to adapt, over generations, in order to survive (viewing it
as an intentional process from the organism's perspective).
What are the pressures on the "Humans On Earth" entity that demand greater
specialization and connectivity in order for it to survive?
======
Now here's the intro to Evolution's Arrow:
Stewart argues that evolution is directional and progressive, and that this
has major consequences for humanity. It argues that evolution moves in the
direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and
evolvability - evolution has organised molecular processes into cells, cells
into organisms, and organisms into societies. The book founds this position
on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It shows how self-interest
at the level of genes and individuals does not stand in the way of the
movement of evolution toward increasing cooperation. Evolution progresses by
discovering ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested
individuals.
======
[1] http://www.quicktopic.com/blurcircle?SpecializationAndCooperation
[2] http://webhost.bridgew.edu/jhayesboh/teilhard.htm
I'd welcome further discussion on this at
http://www.quicktopic.com/5/H/RdGDfdQyR9Goukww4c5c
It's been going on awhile and meandered a bit, but please just pick up
whereever you like.
[BTW, for me this goes to show that as we become more connected, it's more
and more likely (especially for lesser minds like mine) that any idea we
have has already been thought of, often in the form of a fully fleshed-out
theory. All the hints and background that lead to a new idea have also been
available to thousands or millions of other people (but of course that's no
new idea either).]
Steve
