The Essential Tension: Competition, Cooperation and Multilevel Selection in Evolution

Description

'The Essential Tension' explores how agents that naturally compete come to act together as a group. The author argues that the controversial concept of multilevel selection is essential to biological evolution, a proposition set to stimulate new debate. The idea of one collective unit emerging from the cooperative interactions of its constituent (and mutually competitive) parts has its roots in the ancient world. More recently, it has illuminated studies of animal behavior, and played a controversial role in evolutionary biology. In Part I, the author explores the historical development of the idea of a collectivity in biological systems, from early speculations on the sociology of human crowd behavior, through the mid-twentieth century debates over the role of group selection in evolution, to the notion of the selfish gene. Part II investigates the balance between competition and cooperation in a range of contemporary biological problems, from flocking and swarming to experimental evolution and the evolution of multicellularity. Part III addresses experimental studies of cooperation and competition, as well as controversial ideas such as the evolution of evolvability and Stephen Jay Gould’s suggestion that “spandrels” at one level of selection serve as possible sources of variability for the next higher level. Finally, building on the foundation established in the preceding chapters, the author arrives at a provocative new proposition: as a result of the essential tension between competition and cooperation, multiple levels may be essential in order for evolutionary processes to occur at all. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Crowds (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 3-12 Classification (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 13-27 Time, Just Time: Integrating Up the Great Chain of Being (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 29-50 The Battle of the Parts (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 51-64 Synthesis? (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 65-83 Selfish Creatures, Huddled Together for Warmth (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 85-97 The Vanishing Point Appears (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 99-124 Front Matter ....Pages 125-125 Flocking, Swarming, and Communicating (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 127-152 Biofilms (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 153-173 Multicellularity: Dictyostelium (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 175-205 Multicellularity: Volvox (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 207-233 Experimental Evolution (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 235-268 Front Matter ....Pages 269-269 Cooperation and Competition: One Level Sitting on Another (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 271-307 Evol = f(Evol) (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 309-332 Spandrels, Exaptations, and Raw Material (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 333-359 The Essential Tension (Sonya Bahar)....Pages 361-371 Back Matter ....Pages 373-377