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Did Co-operation Evolve? : a Challenge for Darwinism
Kevin Loughran
*
*Kevin Loughran has worked for
many years in the fields of community development and social policy. He is the author of The Idea of Community, Social Policy and Self published by APJ
Publications in 2003
Co-operation
is a problem when seen within a process of Darwinian evolution. Robert Axelrod put the problem simply in The Evolution of Co-operation (1984)
when he asked: under what conditions would co-operation emerge in a world
of egoists?1 Surely those who co-operate would lose
out in the individual struggle for existence. Yet Robert Axelrod and William Hamilton
acknowledged that co-operation is common in nature, between members of the
same species and between members of different species. 2
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 and
working together 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 the material of individual self-interest. Matt Ridley recognised this in The Origins of Virtue (1996) when he
declared that the first life on earth had been atomistic and individual,
but that increasingly forms of life came together.3
The idea that co-operation has
evolved depends on this picture of a previous individual state of existence
from which it has evolved; but does the evidence which is available justify
it? Certainly evidence can be
presented to demonstrate that particular modes of co-operation have
evolved. But is there sufficient
evidence available to support unequivocally the idea that co-operation in
general is the outcome of a process of evolution; that there was a time in
the evolution of life when there was no co-operation? If there is not
sufficient evidence then we need to rethink what we mean by the evolution
of co-operation and by the process of evolution. I would like to quote just three examples
which I believe call into question the picture of a previous individual
state of existence and the conclusions which depend on it.
The first example is from an
elementary form of life, bacteria.
Dale Kaiser and Richard Losick (1997) described how co-operative
forms of behaviour among bacteria could develop in reaction to common
concerns, e.g. when nutrients
began to run out. They described how
cells of Myxococcus Xanthus, a
species of bacteria which inhabits cultivated soils, signal to each other
and come together in search of nutrition.4 Gregory Velicer, Lee Kroos and Richard
Lenski (2000) took a rather different view of the MX bacteria.5 Their experiments led them
to predict that cheating would be common in natural populations of MX.
Did co-operative behaviour between these elementary life forms
evolve from an original state in which their behaviour was individualistic;
or was it simply a question of different behaviours at different times in
different circumstances?
(Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese (2007) have criticised the picture
of microbes as organisms dominated by individual characteristics. They have argued that the processes of
communication between microbes indicate that microbial behaviour is predominantly
co-operative. They have questioned
the very concept of an organism in isolation.6)
The second example concerns
co-operation between human beings.
Carel Van Schaik (2004) argued that the solitary life was the
“ancestral state” for all mammals.7
But when did human beings lead solitary
lives? John Maynard Smith and Eör
Szathmary (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.8 Perhaps the first human beings were distinguished from other
primates precisely by greater social intelligence and a greater capacity
for co-operation.
And can we say with certainty who the
first human beings were? Various
hominid species have been identified from the emergence of
‘Australopithecus’ over four million years ago. They might be considered to be our
ancestors – or simply as species of great apes 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 should
the explosion of innovations in tool-making, in art, in trading, in culture
in general around 40,000 years ago be considered as the true beginning?
Where along this line can we locate
the origins of co-operation between human beings? If we do not have the evidence to answer
this question, then on what grounds do we believe in the evolution of
co-operation between human beings?
The third example concerns the
beginning of life. One view is that
all forms of life can be traced back to one form – the ‘last universal
common ancestor’ or LUCA. But
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, so that mutation
became the most important agent of biological change. In this view life began not with a single
common ancestor, but with a community of ancestors.9
This view has been criticised in
turn. Peter Antonelli and Solange
Rutz (2004) developed mathematical equations to describe the world which
may have existed with a last universal community, and they concluded that
it would have been mathematically unstable.
It would have fallen apart.
It was not, in their judgement, a realistic idea.10
It seems to me that whether life
developed from a first common ancestor or a first community of ancestors is
uncertain. There is insufficient
evidence to support one conclusion or the other unequivocally. How certain can we be then, that
co-operation among living beings is the outcome of a process of evolution
from a previous individual state of existence, if the origins of life are
uncertain?
So it seems to me also that whether
the first life on earth was atomistic and individual, as Matt Ridley
argued, is uncertain. Or can it be
demonstrated unequivocally that there is or has been a state of existence
from which individual life forms emerge to enter into forms of association
with each other, thus allowing for the evolution of co-operation? For if it cannot be demonstrated
unequivocally, if there is serious doubt, then the idea that co-operation
has evolved is called into question.
It depends on the belief that life develops from a state of separate
individual existence – the “ancestral state” – with co-operation coming
later. If life did not begin like
that, it would be as appropriate to talk about the evolution of competition
as about the evolution of co-operation.
This approach – first there were
individuals, and co-operation came later in the development of life –
represents a way of imagining the world.
It is an approach 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.11
The significance in this context of
Charles Darwin’s idea 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 (first published in 1858) ceases to be a powerful tool
which explained much then and explains much now, and becomes an article of
faith. In this sense it resembles
Karl Marx’s assertion of the universality of class struggle in the
development of society, when he declared 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.
This I would propose is the answer
to the problem of co-operation: co-operation, as a general or common state
did not evolve, although particular modes of co-operation may have
evolved. If there are forms of life
which are distinct from each other, which can interact with each other and
follow different individual paths in how they interact: then there is from
the beginning a capacity for co-operation as well as a capacity for
competition.
Co-operation did not evolve. Co-operation is.
1. Robert
Axelrod, The Evolution of
Co-operation (New York: Basic
Books, 1984), p. 3
2. Robert
Axelrod and William Hamilton, “The evolution of co-operation in biological
systems,” in Robert Axelrod, The
Evolution of Co-operation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), Chapt. 5
3. Matt
Ridley, The Origins of Virtue: Human
Instincts and the Evolution of Co-operation. (Harmondsworth: Penguin / Viking, 1996),
p. 14
4. Dale
Kaiser and Richard Losick, “Why and How Bacteria Communicate,” Scientific American, February 1997. Pp.52-57
5. Lee Kroos,
Richard Lenski, and Gregory Velicer, “Developmental Cheating” in “The
Social Bacterium Myxococcus Xanthus,” Nature, 404, April 6, 2000, pp. 598-600
6. Nigel
Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, “Biology’s Next Revolution”, Nature, 445, January 25, 2007
7. Carel
Van Schaik, Among Orangutans: Red
Apes and the Rise of Human Culture (Cambridge,
MS: Belknap Press; Harvard University
Press, 2004), p. 171
8. John
Maynard Smith, and Eör Szathmáry,
“The Origins of Life,” in The Birth of Life to the Origins of Language ( Oxford: OUP, 1999), p.
143
9. John
Whitford, “Born in a watery commune, “Nature, 427, February 19 2004, pp. 674-676
10. University of Alberta Science Faculty Website: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/science/nav02.cfm?nav02=22379&nav01=11471
11. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1968, repr. 1985), pp. 114-115, 445. [Work originally published 1859]
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