Synergistic selection: A bioeconomic approach to complexity in evolution

Abstract

The rise of complexity in living systems over time has become a major theme in evolutionary biology, and a search is underway for a “Grand Unified Theory” (as one biologist characterized it) that can explain this important trend, including especially the major transitions in evolution. As it happens, such a theory already exists. It was first proposed more than 30 years ago. It is called the Synergism Hypothesis, and it is, in essence, an economic theory of complexity. It is focused on the bioeconomics – the costs and benefits of complexity – and on the creative power of synergy in the natural world. The theory proposes that the overall trajectory of the evolutionary process over the past 3.8 billion years or so has been shaped by functional synergies of various kinds and a dynamic of Synergistic Selection (in effect, a subcategory of natural selection). The synergies produced by various forms of cooperation create interdependent functional units of adaptation and evolutionary change. Cooperation may have been the vehicle, but synergy was the driver. Some highlights of a new book devoted to this theory will also be discussed.