3.2 Evolution as Self-Organization

Over the past decade or more, an enriched understanding of the evolutionary development of life, mind, and self has been achieved from a multitude of contributions. If gathered together, as listed next, they suggest not a vicarious, branching bush, but an oriented emergence of life and intelligence.

• A nonequilibrium thermodynamics connects biological systems with physical theory to give evolution a generative force (Ilya Prigogine, Eric Chaisson).
  
• New sciences of complexity describe a natural dynamics at work prior to selection which forms self-organized scales of modular wholes (Stuart Kauffman, David Depew, Walter Fontana).
  
• Hierarchical expansion of evolution into multiple, sequential levels from genes to groups, which exhibits a nested emergence (Stan Salthe, Daniel McShea).
  
• A punctuated equilibrium wherein species remain fixed for a long period and change relatively fast, rather than by gradual transition (Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould).
  
• A fractal-like self-similarity is witnessed in self-organized speciation and ecosystems (Ricard Sole, Susanna Manrubia, Siegfried Fussy, Yuri Wolf).
  
• A rational morphology or structural biology revives the sense of an archetypal Bauplan as a basis for a science of homologous organic form (Brian Goodwin, Gerry Webster).
  
• The perception of an intrinsically convergent evolution of soma and sentience rather than random contingency (Simon Conway Morris, Mark McMenamin, Lori Marino).
  
• A reunion of evolution and embryology known as evolutionary developmental biology (EDB) integrates individual ontogeny with the paleological radiation of organisms (Brian Hall, Scott Gilbert, Wallace Arthur).
  
• The recognition of symbiosis as a major contributor to the emergence of cellular, organismic, and social assemblies (Lynn Margulis).
  
• A developmental systems theory (DST) wherein epigenetic inputs from organism-environment interactions complement molecular genetic codes (Susan Oyama, Eva Jablonka).
  
• Altruistic cooperation as the primary agency and competitive conflict as secondary in the formation and maintenance of animal and human societies (David Sloan Wilson, Elliott Sober).
  
• Behavioral influences impact genetic programs from environmentally active rather than passive organisms (Henry Plotkin).
  
• An increase in modular brain complexity and cognitive capacity defines a linear encephalization and intelligence (Harry Jerison, Barbara Finlay & Richard Darlington, Damon Clark).
  
• A further axial quality is a cerebrally stored, schematic representation of a species’ expanding environmental niche (Derek Bickerton).
  
• New appreciations of animal sentience, intelligence, and emotion suggest a continuum of the rise of consciousness (David Griffin, Marc Bekoff, Irene Pepperberg).
  
• A semiotic measure of evolution as an ever-better information processing ability and knowledge gain (Werner Loewenstein, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Terrence Deacon).
  
• Major transitions in evolution from gene and cell to human society are facilitated by a novel code from molecules to language (John Maynard Smith, Eors Szathmary).
  
• An appreciation of evolution as the vectorial emergence of individuality of more distinct, aware selves (Richard Michod, David Buss, Daniel McShea).
  
• A recovery of the parallel between ontogeny and phylogeny in bodily form, cognitive skills, and language learning (Ernst Mayr, Wallace Arthur, Michael McKinney, Sue Taylor Parker).
  

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