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Co-operation
did not evolve, co-operation is
Kevin Loughran
(This
article is a revised version of the author’s ‘Did Co-operation Evolve? : a
Challenge for Darwinism’, previously published on this page)
Co-operation is a problem, when seen within a process of Darwinian
evolution. Robert Axelrod put the
problem simply when he asked in The
Evolution of Co-operation (1984): under what conditions would
co-operation emerge in a world of egoists?
Surely those who co-operate would lose out in the individual
struggle for existence. Yet Robert
Axelrod acknowledged that co-operation was common in nature, between
members of the same species and between different species.
How can the reality of co-operation be reconciled with the
individual struggle for existence?
The standard explanation is that co-operation has emerged over time:
it has evolved, in nature and among human beings. And co-operation has evolved (so the
explanation goes) because various life forms from the most elementary to
the most complex – to human beings – discover in time that helping others
can be in their individual interests.
This explanation implies that co-operation has evolved where
previously behaviour and forms of association were not co-operative. It has evolved from a state of individual
existence and the material of individual self-interest. Matt Ridley in Origins of Virtue (1996) recognised this implication when he
declared that the first life on earth had been atomistic and individual,
but that increasingly forms of life came together. Life became “a team game rather than a
contest of loners.”
The problem with the standard explanation is that it doesn’t work,
when examined closely. It is not
justified by the evidence which is available, or at least the evidence
which is presented. Certainly evidence
can be presented to demonstrate that particular modes of co-operation have
evolved. But evidence to support the
belief that co-operation in general has evolved where previously behaviour
and forms of association were not co-operative is much less certain.
Take for example co-operation among human beings. Carel Van Schaik argued in Among Orangutans (2004) that the
solitary life was the ‘ancestral state’ for all mammals. But when did human beings lead solitary
lives? John Maynard Smith and Eör Szathmary
in The Birth of Life and the Origins
of Language (1999) observed that social intelligence is a common
characteristic of primates. They
concluded that the process of natural selection, working in favour of
social intelligence, was a major cause of the increase in brain size of
monkeys, apes and humans. Perhaps
the first human beings were distinguished from other primates by even greater
social intelligence and an even greater capacity for co-operation.
And can we say with certainly who the first human beings were? Various hominid species have been
identified since the emergence of ‘Australopithecus’ over four million
years ago. They might be considered
to be our ancestors – or simply as species of great ape with some
human-like characteristics, from which in time human beings evolved. Perhaps the emergence of ‘homo sapiens’
between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago could be taken as the beginning of
humanity as we know it. Or perhaps
the explosion of innovation in tool-making, in art, in trading, in culture
in general that has been identified around 40,000 years ago should be
considered as the true beginning. Do
we know enough to be able to say with any certainty? Perhaps the ‘symbolic revolution’ – the
use of symbols to share information and represent ideas – marks the
emergence of modern humans.
Genevieve von Petzinger speculated that the symbolic revolution may
have occurred before the arrival of the first modern humans in Europe (see: Kate Ravillous. ‘Messages from the Stone Age’, New Scientist, 20 Feb. 2010).
But perhaps co-operation emerged at a much earlier stage of life and
human beings – whenever recognisable human beings emerged – simply
inherited a capacity for co-operation from earlier forms of life. So what statements can be made about the
beginnings of life?
One view is that all forms of life can be traced back to a single
form – the last universal common ancestor or LUCA. Another view has emerged that life began
in a pool of genes shared among many primitive beings working through the
process known as horizontal gene transfer.
Eventually cells became more complex and specialised and so less
interchangeable. (‘Born in a Watery
Commune’, Nature, Vol. 427, 19th February
2004).
Carl Woese has suggested that Darwinian evolution (the process of
evolution as conceived and described by Charles Darwin) may not have been
the original form of evolution.
There may have been an earlier phase of evolution dominated by
horizontal gene transfer; and it would have been in this phase that the universal
genetic code arose (see: Mark Buchanan. ‘Another Kind of Evolution’, New Scientist, 23 January
2010). Indeed, Carl Woese has
proposed that the three fundamental types of cells – eubacteria, archaea
and eukaryotes – evolved independently of each other and not in a line from
a common ancestor (see: ‘On the Evolution of Cells’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 99, No.
13, June 2002).
But Peter Antonelli and Solange Rutz (2004) used mathematical
equations to describe the world which may have existed with a last
universal community in which horizontal gene transfer was common or
universal, and they concluded that it would have been mathematically
unstable. It would have fallen
apart. It was not, in their
judgement, a realistic idea. (‘Born
in a Watery Commune’, see above).
Furthermore, Douglas L.
Theobald has developed a formal test which, it is claimed, provides
statistical evidence for the unity of all known life. The claim is that all known life has at
least one common ancestor (LUCA), although this may not have been the first
organism on Earth (see: Nature,
Vol. 465, May 2010).
So there is a wide range
of opinion and argument as to when life emerged, in what form and by what
process. There is even speculation that life on this
planet may have had origins beyond this planet. So is it reasonable to maintain that the
first life on earth was atomistic and individual, as Matt Ridley did, if
there is no agreement as to how life began?
And is it reasonable to maintain, as Robert Axelrod did, that
co-operation emerged in a world of egoists if it cannot be agreed when
co-operation evolved? Perhaps
co-operation emerged first among primitive life forms. Evidence has been found both for
co-operative behaviour and competitive behaviour among bacteria. (See Dale Kaiser and Richard Losick in
‘How Bacteria Communicate’, Scientific
American , February 1997; and Lee Kroos, Richard Lenski and Gregory
Velicer in ‘Developmental Cheating in the Social Bacterium MX’, Nature, 6th April 2000). Perhaps co-operation emerged first among
our primate ancestors. Perhaps
co-operation between human beings emerged first during the Pleistocene
Period, as Robert Trivers suggested in Social
Evolution (1985). Perhaps
co-operation evolved recurrently as John Maynard Smith proposed. (Quoted in
‘A Tale of Two Selves’, Science, 3 November 2000).
The closer we try to get to the origins of co-operation, the more we
try to explore the problem of co-operation and the standard explanation for
it, then the more problematic the standard explanation becomes. Why then do we continue to assume that
co-operation is the outcome of a process of evolution?
Seeing a world full of egoists, or deciding that the first life on
earth was atomistic and individual, or that the solitary life was the
ancestral state of all mammals – these are as much assertions of belief as
conclusions drawn directly from systematic observations and analysis. They represent a way of imagining the
world. It is a way which is shaped
by and dependent on Charles Darwin’s idea of the individual struggle for
existence. Life evolves through the
workings of natural selection and natural selection acts by competition
between individual organisms.
The significance in this context of the individual struggle for
existence is that it is not presented simply as a common or pervasive
principle of life but as a universal principle. It offers a complete explanation of the
way things are. If the individual
struggle for existence is accepted as a universal principle in the
development of life then of course co-operation – which is undoubtedly a
reality – has evolved.
But to regard the individual struggle for existence as a universal
principle means that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution ceases to be a
powerful tool which explained much then and explains much now. It becomes articles of faith. In this sense it resembles Karl Marx’s
assertion at the beginning of the Communist
Manifesto that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the
history of class struggle. Both
ideas – of the individual struggle for existence and of the history of
class struggle – seem to reflect a belief that it is possible to have a
complete explanation of the way things are.
The standard explanation, that co-operation is the outcome of a
process of evolution, simply doesn’t work as a complete explanation of the
way things are. It doesn’t explain
the reality of co-operation properly, although it can help to explain the
emergence of particular modes of co-operation.
I would propose an alternative to the standard explanation. Co-operation as a general or common state
of existence did not evolve. If from
the beginning there were forms of life which were distinct from each other,
which had some degree of existence apart from each other but could also
interact with each other: then from the beginning there was a capacity for
co-operation as well as a capacity for competition. Co-operative behaviour and competitive
behaviour are recurrent and parallel themes of existence from the earliest
and most primitive life forms to human beings and human societies. There is some evidence to support this
argument. Is there any evidence to
contradict it?
Co-operation did not evolve.
Co-operation is.
© Kevin Loughran
2010
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