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Drawing on evolutionary history and the emergent science of human nature, this book argues that humans have an innate sense of fairness. While these impulses can easily be subverted by greed and demagoguery, they can also be harnessed for good. The author brings together the latest findings from the behavioral and biological sciences to propose a new Biosocial Contract including sweeping economic and political reforms based on three principles of fairness--equality, equity, and reciprocity. His conclusion is that the proper response to bank bailouts and financial chicanery isn't to get mad--it's to get fair.

AbstractThe growth‐oriented economic strategy that has largely prevailed in Western societies over the past two centuries is literally at a dead‐end, along with our global system of independent and sometimes deeply competitive nation states. As we have seen once again with the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the devastating global economic recession and, more important, our rapidly escalating climate crisis, the world is becoming ever more interdependent—and more precarious. We are facing a collective choice like none other in our long, multi‐million‐year history (and prehistory) as a ground‐dwelling bipedal ape. There are only two paths going forward. We must either create a more integrated and cooperative global society and political order or else our species will very likely be consumed by lethal competition and conflict, and perhaps even devolve and go extinct. Only an organized process of cooperative social, economic and political change on a global scale offers us genuine reason for hope. Biologists would call it a "superorganism"—a whole with many parts that are tied together and have a shared fate. The term is commonly used with reference to an integrated, socially organized group in the natural world. Here, I will provide a very brief outline and roadmap for how to achieve a new, more legitimate, and sustainable economic and political world order—a global superorganism. A new social contract will also be required.

Living systems theory and other theory and research in the systems sciences and complexity science has illuminated many aspects of how living systems work—their mechanisms, processes and relationships. The Synergism Hypothesis, originally proposed in 1983, addresses the evolution of cooperative phenomena in nature and why there has been a secular trend over time toward increased complexity in living systems. This theory highlights the role of functional synergy—adaptively significant combined effects that are interdependent and otherwise unattainable—in shaping the 'progressive' emergence of complex living systems. This approach is entirely consistent with modern evolutionary biology and natural selection theory and is thus radically opposed to various orthogenetic/deterministic theories of complexity that have been proposed over the years. The Synergism Hypothesis has recently gained scientific support, and there is growing appreciation for the role of various kinds of synergy as an influence in the evolutionary process. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

I think it is fair to say that synergy is an idea whose time has finally come. It seems that every week another new example of synergy is reported in some scientific journal, and articles about synergy are nowadays routinely accepted for publication in various disciplines. This was certainly not the case 30 years ago. Back then using the term "synergy" in a journal submission was an almost certain kiss of death. I speak from personal experience. So times have changed. However, the theory proposed in my 1983 book, The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive Evolution^ has had a more complex journey, and herein lies a bit of intellectual history and some lessons about the culture and politics of science.

Holistic Darwinism is a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that is currently underway in evolutionary biology and related disciplines. Important developments include (1) a growing appreciation for the fact that evolution is a multilevel process, from genes to ecosystems, and that interdependent coevolution is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature; (2) a revitalization of group selection theory, which was banned (prematurely) from evolutionary biology over 30 years ago (groups may in fact be important evolutionary units); (3) a growing respect for the fact that the genome is not a "bean bag" (in biologist Ernst Mayr's caricature), much less a gladiatorial arena for competing selfish genes, but a complex, interdependent, cooperating system; (4) an increased recognition that symbiosis is an important phenomenon in nature and that symbiogenesis is a major source of innovation in evolution; (5) an array of new, more advanced game theory models, which support the growing evidence that cooperation is commonplace in nature and not a rare exception; (6) new research and theoretical work that stresses the role of nurture in evolution, including developmental processes, phenotypic plasticity, social information transfer (culture), and especially the role of behavioral innovations as pacemakers of evolutionary change (e.g., niche construction theory, which is concerned with the active role of organisms in shaping the evolutionary process, and gene-culture coevolution theory, which relates especially to the dynamics of human evolution); (7) and, not least, a broad effort to account for the evolution of biological complexity — from major transition theory to the "Synergism Hypothesis." Here I will briefly review these developments and will present a case for the proposition that this paradigm shift has profound implications for the social sciences, including specifically political theory, economic theory, and political science as a discipline. Interdependent superorganisms, it turns out, have played a major role in evolution — from eukaryotes to complex human societies.

AbstractNorbert Wiener's cybernetic paradigm represents one of the seminal ideas of the 20th century. It has provided a general framework for analysing communications and control processes in 'purposeful' systems, from genomes to empires. Especially notable are the many important applications in control engineering. Nevertheless, its full potential has yet to be realized. For instance, cybernetics is relatively little used as an analytical tool in the social sciences. One reason, it is argued here, is that Wiener's framework lacked a crucial element––a functional definition of information. The functional (content and meaning) role of information in cybernetic processes cannot be directly measured with Claude Shannon's statistical approach, which Wiener also adopted. Although so‐called Shannon information has made many valuable contributions and has many important uses, it is blind to the functional properties of information. Recently, we proposed a radically different approach to information theory. After briefly critiquing the literature in information theory, this new kind of cybernetic information will be described. We call it 'control information'. Control information is not a thing or a mechanism but an attribute of the relationships between things. It is defined as: the capacity (know how) to control the acquisition, disposition and utilization of matter/energy in 'purposive' (cybernetic) processes. We will briefly elucidate the concept and we will describe a proposed formalization in terms of a common unit of measurement, namely the quantity of available energy that can be controlled by a given unit of information in a given context. However, other metrics are also feasible, from money to allocations of labour (time and energy). Some illustrations will be provided and we will also briefly discuss some of the implications. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The accumulating scientific evidence — across many disciplines — regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call "Fair Shares." This paradigm consists of three complementary normative principles. First, goods and services should be distributed to each according to his or her basic needs. Second, surpluses beyond the provisioning of our basic needs should be distributed according to merit. And, third, each of us is obliged in return to contribute to the "collective survival enterprise" in accordance with his or her ability. Though none of these three principles is new, in combination they provide a biologically informed middle way between capitalism and socialism. Some of the many issues that are raised by this formulation are also briefly addressed.

Evolutionary ethics is a subject that has been debated ever since Darwin's day. The basic issue, in a nutshell, is whether or not human ethical systems can be explained — and justified — in terms of evolutionary principles. In recent years there has been an upsurge of publications devoted to this issue, including many new books (as well as a number of books on Darwinism and religion) and countless journal articles. Indeed, an Internet search using the term "evolutionary ethics" yielded 65,400 citations of various kinds. As this outpouring of publications suggests, there has been a great diversity of views on the subject over the years.