Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity

by John Stewart

Book Overview

Evolutions Arrow argues that evolution is directional and progressive, and that this has major consequences for humanity. Without resort to teleology, the book demonstrates that evolution moves in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0646394975
• ISBN13: 9780646394978
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Chapman Press
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

More than simple evolution

I read this book slowly and carefully and underlined about a third of it and wrote many notes in the margins. It provides a rich collection of ideas relevant to evolution. It includes discussions of free markets versus government-controlled markets, strategic management, evolving international relations, and many more ideas, connecting them all with evolution. Evolution is such a contentious topic that I am reluctant to say very much about it or any book about it because people are so eager to take sides and misinterpret the words that are used. The author of this book takes a primarily scientific point of view, but his ideas do not seem to conflict with some of my own thoughts about the possible influence of something that provides more complex results than a purely undirected process would provide. The author provides a very long list of references and footnotes relevant to the ideas in the book. He has obviously done an amazing amount of reading and thinking. If you are interested in evolution, not only in the past but also in the future, I think you will enjoy this well-organized and thought-provoking book.

Governance as a vertical market

This book makes a compelling case for evolution of life on this planet as having a clear and predictable direction. Each major advance in evolution of life is the result of cooperation of simpler organisms into a vertical organization of these simpler organisms into a more complex organism. The premise is that cooperation is a "win-win" proposition and that evolution occurs when the benefits of this cooperation can be distributed to all the organisms participating in the cooperation. The barrier to evolution is that there are "freeloaders", "cheats", and "thieves" who receive the benefits of communal cooperation without paying the costs that produced those benefits. Until effective governance is in place to stop these uncooperative organisms, evolution into the next level of vertical integration does not occur. We are now at a point in the evolution of human society where we have global economic markets that are not adequately controlled by governance mechanisms that can fairly distribute the benefits and the costs of these economic markets. For those who are aware of this evolutionary direction, establishment of a global vertical market as a governance mechanism provides meaning to life beyond gratification of personal biological (food, sex) and social status (money, power) objectives. I strongly encourage everyone to read this book, especially if you are sensing a lack of meaning in your life!

Humanity at the center of Evolution

This is an amazingly bold book. Copernicus and other Renaissance intellectuals took "man" out of the center of the universe. Now Stewart and others are putting humanity back at the center but in a radically different way from the theocrats. Contrary to the conventional view that evolution is just adaptation to existing circumstances, without any overall direction, Stewart identifies two unifying themes in evolution. First and foremost is the drive toward greater cooperation among organisms due to the huge payoffs in survival that such cooperation yields. Second is the drive towards better mechanisms of adaptability itself, yielding much more rapid evolution with fewer dead ends. Humanity is identified as the ultimate in both cooperation and adaptability among current organisms. Planetary society, or global governance, is next on the cooperation agenda. Oral traditions and now print and electronic media have already yielded a fantastic increase in adaptability. This is cultural, not genetic, adaptability, but all nature cares is that it is effective both within a single lifetime and between generations. Next on this agenda is a much deeper psychic ability that will enable individuals to achieve satisfaction through pursuit of a visionary planetary society, transcending existing, recreation, entertainment, family, work, community, etc. Others who are of the optimistic sort, might proclaim genetic engineering of humans as the next wave of adaptability, but Stewart only looks at genetic engineering of other organisms. Another book that sees a possible evolutionary breakthrough by humanity is "Promise Ahead - A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future" by Duane Elgin of "Voluntary Simplicity" fame. A major difference is that Elgin looks at environmental barriers to humanity's success - climate change, resources exhaustion like Peak Oil, etc in the face of massive population. Instead Stewart looks at evolutionary barriers to cooperation. That is, the most primitive evolutionary force is reproduction of the individual organism, but individual success may spell doom for the greater success yielded by cooperation. This is the "prisoner's dilemma" of game theory. Example: when our individual cells attempt to proliferate at will, we get cancer and die. So Stewart identifies how this barrier was overcome at each stage of evolution, from primordial soups of reproducing proteins to modern humans, usually by a strong "manager". For humans we had the subordination of the individual to the family and the tribe, now to the corporation and the state and much in-between. Principal problems to overcome are the "freeloaders" and "cheats". Religion and mythology used to play a dominant role as manager in enforcing community norms and morals, but these are also a barrier to creative change, hence the emergence of the modern secular state. This in turn has left a somewhat hedonistic individualism in its wake, which could be cured by the transformative view of

Aligning with Evolution

When I first read Evolution's Arrow in 2001, John Stewart's analysis of the human situation and its relationship to evolutionary processes impressed me greatly. In my own writing since then I have quoted passages from his book and commented favorably on his view of things. It is a book rich in important insights that can help humanity deal with its present multi-problem predicament. With the book now more widely available, I wanted to take the opportunity to say some things about it and encourage others to read it.A central focus of the book is the role of cooperation in furthering the evolutionary process. Stewart effectively sells the idea that although competition may at times help an individual organism to survive, the root mechanism for evolutionary advancement in the larger sense always has been, and still is, cooperation. If self-interested individuals work together in the right ways, all can benefit. Early in biological evolution it was necessary to wait long periods until the slow-moving evolutionary process invented an effective new technique for "managing" cooperation. These management mechanisms are necessary because they allow cooperation to overcome competitive threats from those not willing to cooperate -- and Stewart tells us about some of these techniques. Today, however, with human decision-making driving evolution, we have the opportunity to bring human ingenuity to bear on the problem and to change things much more rapidly. We can devise ways of better-managing the cooperative mechanisms that already exist (such as markets) and we can invent new ones. Cooperation is the way forward for humanity, and creating management and governance structures which bring self-interest into harmony with the long-term interests of the human species and all life on earth is the challenge.Stewart notes that present human psychology is determined by our evolutionary past -- both biological and cultural -- and that to meet the challenge we must transform ourselves psychologically. He advocates aligning our personal behavior with the inherent directivity of evolution, and says that to "contribute to evolutionary objectives" we need to "develop the self-knowledge and psychological skills needed to transcend our biological and cultural past." I can here only hint at the insightful gold that resides between the covers of Evolution's Arrow. Whether your interest is a clearer understanding of evolution, or saving evolution's experiment here on earth from today's human mis-management, get and read this book.

Insightful, Inspiring and Trust Building!

My wife, Connie Barlow, a writer of popular science books, and I live permanently on the road. We travel to colleges, universities, churches, synagogues, and meditation centers teaching and preaching what we call "the marriage of science and religion for personal and planetary wellbeing" all across North America. Our specialty is helping people see evolution in sacred ways.Over the last decade or so I have read dozens of excellent books related to science and religion, sustainability, the epic of evolution, and the future of humanity. (See ... for an annotated list of Connie's and my favorites.) Evolution's Arrow, by John Stewart, is one of the wisest, most insightful, and most inspiring I've ever encountered. I devoured it twice in the last week.To tell the truth, I simply cannot speak too highly of this book. My hunch is that at the end of my life I'll still rate Evolution's Arrow as one of the most significant books I've ever read. Stewart's thesis is simple: The universe is going somewhere, there's a direction to evolution, and this has major consequences for humanity. Without resorting to teleology, Stewart argues that wherever life emerges in the cosmos, evolution will progress in the direction of greater cooperation and complexity at ever increasing scale and evolvability. Why cooperate? Because in a cosmos where natural selection is a primary driver of evolution, those who cooperate, whether they be molecules, cells, organisms, or societies, will outcompete those who do not. Cooperative organizations are more competitive and adaptable than non-cooperative organizations, if, that is, the system is "managed" in such a way as to ensure that cooperators benefit from their cooperating and non-cooperators pay for their non-cooperating. Without management, or governance, freeloaders and cheats will typically outcompete and out-reproduce cooperators. But where management - effective governance - can ensure that the system captures the results of cooperating and non-cooperating, evolution will produce cooperative organizations out of self-interested individuals and continue doing so at ever wider scale and adaptability.The key to progressive evolution is organizing and managing a system such that an individual pursuing his or her own self interest also pursues the interests of the whole; and by serving the whole, they are serving themselves. Stewart shows that this is not nearly as difficult as one might imagine. Evolution has already done so many times.This understanding of the role of governance, prehuman and human, in evolution is one of Stewart's most valuable contributions. Management, of course, can be external or internal. Examples he gives of external management include the way RNA manages proteins and the way rulers and governments manage human societies. His examples of internal management include insect societies managed by genes reproduced in each individual and human tribes managed by inculcated beliefs and moral codes