VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

2. Complex Local to Global Network Biosocieties

Turker, Meliksah and Haluk Bingol. Multi-Layer Network Approach in Modeling Epidemics in an Urban Town. European Physical Journal B. February, 2023. This entry by Bogazici University, Istanbul computer engineers is a good instance of how network theoretical phenomena, widely conceived, can well apply and advise even to these vectorial diseases,

Over the last three years the global COVID-19 pandemic killed millions and distressed billions of people worldwide.. Researchers studied its path and fate for by forecasting techniques and epidemics simulations on networks. To better represent real-life in an urban town, we propose a novel multi-layer network model, where each corresponds to an interaction that occurs daily, such as “household”, “work” or “school”. Our simulations indicate that a “friendship” layer has the highest impact on slowing down epidemics. (Excerpt)

Turvey, Michael. Philosophical Issues in Self-organization as a Framework for Ecological Psychology. Ecological Psychology. 20/2, 2008. An introduction to papers from a September 2007 conference with this title held at the University of Connecticut. Authors include Alicia Juarrero and Stephanie Petrusz, with the quote from Anthony Chemero.

Imagine that nature is self-organizing all the way down: the processes and entities at any given scale are self-organized, autonomous systems; furthermore, the constituent parts of these self-organized, autonomous systems are themselves self-organized, autonomous systems. This is view that people interested in self-organization and complexity, including ecological psychologists, would find congenial, and one can easily imagine that it encompasses scales of nature from chemical reactions to Gaia. (257)

Urry, John. The Complexity Turn. Theory, Culture & Society. 22/5, 2005. An introduction to a special issue about rethinkings in social and cultural sciences via nonlinear systems to move beyond reductionist analyses. As a result, emergent complex adaptive systems,” as a “neo-vitalism” of “vital matter,” are being found from flocks of birds to global polities. But the postmodern mindset of these British and Continental deliberations inhibits an imagination of a greater genesis that such common phenomena spring from and exemplify.

Vallacher, Robin, et al. Dynamical Foundations of Intractable Conflict. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. 16/2, 2010. In a special issue on Dynamical Systems Theory and Conflict, Vallacher, Florida Atlantic University, with Peter Coleman, Columbia University, Andrzej Nowak, University of Warsaw, and Lan Bui-Wrzosinska, Warsaw School of Social Sciences, who are also main members of the International Center for Complexity and Conflict, (Google) strive for novel complex sciences insights to such rampant destructive carnage, very bad for children, women, villages and the environment. A typical extraordinary paper might be Bartoli, Andrea, et al. “Peace is in Movement: A Dynamical Systems Perspective on the Emergence of Peace in Mozambique.” See also Complex Human Dynamics by Nowak, et al (2013).

This special issue conceptualizes and investigates intractable social conflict from the perspective of dynamical social psychology. This approach represents a distillation of the concepts, methods, and tools associated with dynamical systems and complexity science that were initially developed in mathematics and the natural sciences. In this article, we provide an overview of the dynamical perspective on conflict, identify the key concepts that are directly relevant to understanding how conflict can transform from constructive to destructive, and suggest how an understanding of the dynamical bases of conflict can be used to resolve conflicts that appear intractable. (Abstract)

We hasten to note that the dynamical approach is not a form of reductionism, the rather out dated notion that higher-level phenomena can (and must) be understood in terms of the mechanisms operating at lower levels. To the contrary, the dynamical perspective is defined in terms of system-level processes that characterize phenomena across all domains of science, from bacterial growth to galaxy formation. Scientists over the past 30 years have come to appreciate the generality of these processes, focusing their energies on identifying how diverse topics can all be understood in terms of such notions as self-organization, emergence, bifurcation, and attractor dynamics. (114)

Vallacher, Robin, et al. Rethinking Intractable Conflict: The Perspective of Dynamical Systems. American Psychologist. May-June, 2010. With co-authors Peter Coleman, Andrzej Nowak, and Lan Bui-Wrzosinska, who are associated with the “Dynamics of Conflict” project (view website and links), an important contribution about how constant warfare, often over ethnic, religious, or territorial issues which act as “attractors,” can be understood in such terms of an underlying mathematics of complexity. By virtue of these insights, real, heretofore elusive, pathways to resolution may present themselves.

Indeed, recent years have witnessed the advent of a perspective in the physical sciences and mathematics that identifies the dynamic and inertial processes that are common to everything from slime molds to galaxy formation. (263) Although developed in mathematics and the physical sciences, the principles of dynamical systems and complexity have potential application to the fundamentals of human experience. This potential has become increasingly manifest since the 1990s, and the dynamical perspective has emerged as a primary paradigm for the investigation of psychological processes at different levels of personal and social reality. (263)

Wade, Nicholas. Chimps, Too, Wage War and Annex Rival Territory. New York Times. June 22, 2010. The above item cites behavioral field studies, with comments by Richard Wrangham and others, who find a deep continuity between apes and people for unrestrained violence. A concurrent Times video blog chronicles the death by mortar fire of a teenage civilian girl in Afghanistan. But even with worldwide, instant, graphic reportage, can we human beings ever seem to learn anything, are we as stupid as monkeys to stop the senseless slaughter? Can we ever summon the humane courage and vision to see how mad is our obsession with weapons, with war for its own and any sake, immune to perpetual carnage?

Wagner, Roy. An Anthropology of the Subject. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Having published earlier on culture and symbols, the University of Virginia scholar completes his trilogy by going to their source in human subjectivity. Of interest his working model of a “human hologram,” set in an Indra’s web of recurrent identities, part in whole in part. But although Wagner achieves such insights, he is immersed in the field’s postmodern wordiness, which prohibits an encompassing meta-narrative of a greater creation.

Weingart, Peter, et al, eds. Human by Nature: Between Biology and the Social Sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997. Many contributions seek common ground and cross-fertilization between these previously isolated disciplines and realms. In so doing, an attempt is made to meld evolutionary, biological, behavioral, and cultural findings into a unified scenario of multilevel complexity.

Whiten, Andrew, et al. The Extension of Biology Through Culture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114/7775, 2017. AW with Francisco Ayala, Marcus Feldman, and Kevin Laland, introduce a Sackler Colloquium on this title topic. The collection is notable because an integration of biological evolution with primate and human cultural societies, has had a problematic course. A satisfactory consensus at last seems possible by way of 2010s advances such as genomic aspects. A premier array of 18 authoritative papers include Cultural Evolutionary Theory by Nicole Creanza, et al, Gene-Culture Coevolution in Whales and Dolphins by Hal Whitehead, Cultural Macroevolution Matters by Russell Gray and Joseph Watts, Cumulative Cultural Learning by Cristine Legare, and Pursuing Darwin’s Curious Parallel: Prospects for a Science of Cultural Evolution by Alex Mesoudi.

In the past few decades, scholars from several disciplines have pursued the curious parallel noted by Darwin between the genetic evolution of species and the cultural evolution of beliefs, skills, knowledge, languages, institutions, and other forms of socially transmitted information. Here, I review current progress in the pursuit of an evolutionary science of culture that is grounded in both biological and evolutionary theory, but also treats culture as more than a proximate mechanism that is directly controlled by genes. Both genetic and cultural evolution can be described as systems of inherited variation that change over time in response to processes such as selection, migration, and drift. The foundation of cultural evolution was laid in the late 20th century with population-genetic style models of cultural microevolution, and the use of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct cultural macroevolution. Since then, there have been major efforts to understand the sociocognitive mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution, the consequences of demography on cultural evolution, the empirical validity of assumed social learning biases, the relative role of transformative and selective processes, and the use of quantitative phylogenetic and multilevel selection models to understand past and present dynamics of society-level change. (Mesoudi)

Humans live in culturally constructed niches filled with artifacts, skills, beliefs, and practices that have been inherited, accumulated, and modified over generations. A causal account of the complexity of human culture must explain its distinguishing characteristics: It is cumulative and highly variable within and across populations. I propose that the psychological adaptations supporting cumulative cultural transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to support the acquisition of highly variable behavioral repertoires. This paper describes variation in the transmission practices (teaching) and acquisition strategies (imitation) that support cumulative cultural learning in childhood. Examining flexibility and variation in caregiver socialization and children’s learning extends our understanding of evolution in living systems by providing insight into the psychological foundations of cumulative cultural transmission—the cornerstone of human cultural diversity. (Legare)

Wilson, David Sloan. Darwin’s Cathedral. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. As the overall model of evolution shifts from a branching tree to a sequential multilevel structure, a view of social groups as adaptive organisms gains increasing validity. A leading proponent explains how religious societies provide a prime example of organic behavior on a communal scale.

Wilson, David Sloan, et al. Cognitive Cooperation. Human Nature. 15/3, 2004. By clever “twenty questions” experiments, the subliminal presence of a group mental activity and semblance of a collective mind can for the first time be quantified.

Cognitive cooperation needs to occupy center stage in evolutionary psychology, which in turn can provide a unifying conceptual framework for all research on group cognition. (248)

Wilson, Edward, O. The Social Conquest of Earth. New York: Norton, 2012. The octogenarian entomologist and philosopher proceeds with another erudite, concerned volume. Drawing upon lifelong studies of colonial insects, and on recent collaborations with Martin Nowak and David Sloan Wilson, the work goes on to emphasize the active, evolutionary role of “group selection” in propelling our Homo Sapiens Sapiens take over. The message is that if properly understood, admitted and availed, the wisdom might help temper our species’ obsession for internecine conflicts.

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