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

John Stewart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2000

Evolution's 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 direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and evolvability - evolution has organised molecular processes into cells, cells into organisms, and organisms into societies. The book founds this position on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It shows that self-interest at the level of the genes does not prevent cooperation from increasing as evolution unfolds. Evolution progresses by discovering ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested individuals. The book also shows that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover effective adaptations. And it has produced new and better mechanisms. Evolution's Arrow uses this understanding of the direction of evolution to identify the next great steps in the evolution of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue to be successful in evolutionary terms. A key step for humanity is to increase the scale and evolvability of our societies, eventually forming a unified and cooperative society on the scale of the planet. We must also transform ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms that are able to escape their biological and cultural past by adapting in whatever directions are necessary to achieve future evolutionary success.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: The Chapman Press (January 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0646394975
• ISBN-13: 978-0646394978
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Stewart is an Australian-based member of the Evolution of Complexity and Cognition (ECCO) Research Group of the Free University of Brussels. His main interest is in the development of an evolutionary worldview that reveals to us who we are, and what we should be doing with our lives. His work on the directionality of evolution and its implications for humanity has been published in key papers in international science journals. A number of his recent papers have focused on psychological development, including the future evolution of consciousness. He is the author of the book 'Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity'. More recently he has finalized 'The Evolutionary Manifesto' which outlines an evolutionary worldview and explores its relevance to humanity. It is at http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com .

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, Inspiring and Trust Building!, April 1, 2004

By 

Michael Dowd "America's evolutionary evangelist" (Freeland, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity (Paperback)

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.

By demonstrating how management systems and evolutionary "mechanisms" (means of searching for and reproducing improvements) have themselves evolved, and continue to do so, Stewart shows how self-interest at the level of genes and individuals need not stand in the way of the movement of evolution toward increasing cooperation and complexity. As he states, "Evolution on Earth to date has organized molecular processes into small-scale prokaryote cells, prokaryote cells into larger-scale eukaryote cells, eukaryote cells into multicellular organisms, and organisms into societies. It is about to produce a unified cooperative organization of living processes on the scale of the planet, managed by humans."

Others, of course (Aurobindo, Teilhard, de Rosnay, Wright, Russell, Hubbard, and Wilber come to mind) have said similar things. What makes Stewart's contribution unique, and invaluable, is both the clarity of his argument and, especially, his vision of where and how humanity needs to change in order to align with and embody the evolutionary impulse. His chapter on creating a "vertical market" for models of effective global governance is worth the price of the book in itself. His vision of how to organizationally move into the future, both individually and collectively, is both alluring and compelling.

Some readers may find irritating the author's habit of repetition, but I was grateful. By the time I closed the book, his main points had become so much my own that I can trust they will not disappear as a passing enthusiasm.

Evolution's Arrow is both mind-expanding and trust building. If I had to recommend reading only one book on evolution and the future of humanity, I'd suggest this one. It rocks!

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aligning with Evolution, April 28, 2004

By 

Copthorne Macdonald (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity (Paperback)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Governance as a vertical market, August 7, 2006

By 

Sherwood Pidcock "Woody" (U-District in Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity (Paperback)

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!