The Evolution of Politics: Our First Five Million Years

• In Event: Evolutionary Approaches to Politics

Abstract

Much can be gained by viewing politics as a product of the evolutionary process. From the perspective of the growing theoretical and research literature in the biological sciences related to the progressive evolution of complex living systems over time, as well as the research in paleoanthropology, archaeology, and the science of cybernetics, politics in human societies represents a variation, and elaboration, on a major evolutionary theme. Political processes have played an indispensable functional role in goal-oriented cooperative systems at all “levels” of biological organization. This view of politics is also consistent with a causal theory – known as the Synergism Hypothesis – which seeks to explain the rise of complexity in evolution over time and, equally important, the frequent examples of “devolution” and dissolution. The evolution of political systems in humankind will also be briefly described, from its possible origins among our remote australopithecine ancestors to the emergence of complex civilizations in the Holocene.

Author

• Peter Corning, Institute for the Study of Complex Systems