Evolution's Arrow: The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity (Paperback)

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!

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.