Cooperative Evolution: Reclaiming Darwin’s Vision

Description

Cooperative Evolution offers a fresh account of evolution consistent with Charles Darwin’s own account of a cooperative, inter-connected, buzzing and ever-changing world. Told in accessible language, treating evolutionary change as a cooperative enterprise brings some surprising shifts from the traditional emphasis on the dominance of competition. The book covers many evolutionary changes reconsidered as cooperation. These include the cooperative origins of life, evolution as a spiral rather than a ladder or tree, humans as a part of natural systems rather than the purpose, relationships between natural and social change, and the role of the individual in adaptive radiation onto new ground. The story concludes with a projection of human evolution from the past into the future. Acknowledgements Glossary of Words and Phrases Introduction 1. In Homage to Darwin 2. All Knowledge is Metaphor 3. Intelligent Evolution and Intelligence 4. How Evolution Works 5. The Past is a Foreign Country 6. We Do Things Differently Now 7. Energy: Where it all Begins 8. Everything is Connected 9. Walling In and Walling Out 10. Becoming Human 11. Inheriting the Earth 12. Our Closest Cousins 13. Glimpses of the Future 14. Weaving the Golden Net Bibliography