30. Evolution in society

De basic processes of evolution are the creation of variety, selection, and transmission of characteristics if their carriers survive selection. Those processes may also be seen as processes of self-organization in economic or political systems and organizations. Herman van Gunsteren noted that in those cases one could add an additional process of indirect control. Such control does not aim directly at the content or outcomes of the processes of variety, selection and transmission, which would obstruct evolution/self-organization, but affects the way in which those processes work, or fail to work.

In the further specification of the basic processes fundamental differences arise between evolution in biology and in society. Van Gunsteren made the useful distinction between the principles and the mechanisms by which they are realised. The principles may be the same but the mechanisms differ radically.

In the capitalist economy and in democracy variety is generated by invention. While there is much trial and error, the creation of variety here is not entirely blind, since unlike biological evolution it is informed by learning and experience obtained from the selection process. In failing one learns what not to do and to look for novel ways. And that may limit variety, preventing attempts that seem insane but might turn out to be strokes of genius. 

Selection takes place by means of competition, for markets viz. votes. A question then is to what extent that selection environment can be affected or even created by the carriers (firms, politicians) of the units that are selected (products, political programmes), in what is called co-evolution. That happens to some extent also in biology, but here the opportunities for it are much greater. Entrepreneurial firms make markets, and entrepreneurial politicians set the political agenda. Scientists may create their own journal to publish work not accepted by others. That may have a positive effect, when it allows innovators to create an initial niche in which they can survive for the time being, before jumping to a larger market. But when the fabrication of the selection environment becomes stronger or faster than the selection process, evolution fails. The process can then get locked up in a struggle between vested interests. 

Third, the transmission of success is based on communication, and there meanings are not duplicated, as genes are, but shifted, supplemented or transformed. That means that transmission is also a source of variety. Conversation and training not only carry over but also create ideas.   

In sum, in so far as one can form one’s own selection environment, variety is constrained by existing common sense (established ways of solving problems), and transmission is part of variety generation, evolution can fail and the result may be a different process altogether.

For evolution in society we must study cognition and language, which can yield features that are sui generis and may no longer correspond with evolutionary logic. Nevertheless evolutionary logic is useful for luring policy makers, in economics and politics, away from their predilection towards intelligent design.