Darwin Was Wrong

"Collective Creative Structures

Chaos shows that when diverse individuals self-organize, they are able to create highly adaptable and resilient forms. One good example is the food distribution system of New York City. John Holland, a complexity theorist, noticed some amazing things about this system. Manhattan is an island with no more than a weeks supply of food on hand. The system that feeds the city has to respond to the kaleidoscopic transformations the island undergoes every day: There are new buildings being erected and torn down, changes in fads for different cuisines, ever shifting populations. Yet, Holland notes, New York City is free of famines or gluts, and you can find whatever food you want at any time of day or night. The food system percolates efficiently within the fertile boundry between order and chaos.

Holland argues that most of the formal rules (traffic, health and safety, comsumer protection, and so on) that help keep things moving along weren't planned in advance, but emerged as the system itself emerged. New York's food distribution system evolved, as chaotic self-organized open systems do, from the bottom up, out of feedback among interacting individual elements. These include individual entrepreneurs, varied groups of consumers, large commercial organizations, and functions of government. Picture what would happen if New York City's government or some privatized entity tried to impose a food distribution system from the top down, setting five year plans, strategic goals, budgets, forecasts, procedure manuals, and job descriptions. It was just this kind of attempt to "manage" the natural chaos of society with a global plan that the Chinese communists attempted in the 1950's by imposing a command economy. The result was chatastrophic shortages and famines.

The coevolution perspective

At this point ardent free market capitalists may hope to leap on this food distribution example as proof of their view that the best way for individuals to organize and relate to each other is through unfettered competition. However, chaos views the example from its own perspective. According to chaos, believing New York's food distribution system is an entity essentially created by competition is like believing that apples exist because of insecticide.

Capitalist ideology is very similar to the ideology of Darwinian biology, and capitalism has frequently used biology a rationalization for unrestrained competitive practices. Darwin proposed competition as the major force in the evolution of life, the main energy driving the relationship between individual and group and one group and another.

Chaos theory shifts perspective and allows us to appreciate the fact that biology is full of "coevolution" and "cooperation". These activites probably have a far more significant impact on the shape of things than does competition. As biologist Brian Goodwin puts it,"I'm not denying natural selection. I'm just saying that it does not explain the origins of biological form, of the pervasive order we see out there." Rhesus monkeys illustrate Goodwins point.

According to the theory of natural selection, competition, hierarchy, and dominance (power) are the key survival and reproductive strategies for a species, and therefore for individuals within that species. Rhesus monkeys have long been considered by biologists one of the quintessential hierarchical primates. Native to india, the rhesus live in troops of about forty, and both males and females in the troops appear to have a clear pattern of ranking. For example, the "alpha" female in the troop can displace any of her underlings at a water fountain, a spot in the shade, or a scramble for food. Similarly, dominance is exerted all the way down the line. In light of Darwinian theory, biologists naturally concluded that the central social activity within the Rhesus troops must be an endless competition for dominance.

Darwin asserted that the purpose of the dominance struggle, the big payoff, was that the tougher, "fitter" animals---the ones in the top ranks of the hierarchy---would get to mate more frequently and pass on their genes.

Studying the Rhesus using DNA fingerprinting, scientists have discovered, however, that there is something wrong with this competitive picture. Analysis revealed that the high or low rank of a female rhesus bore no relation to her ability to bequeath her genes, mate with any of the males of the troop, or bring new males into the group. In rhesus society, the females as a group decide what males are "fit" to be allowed into the troop, and if no female shows an interest in a male, it doesn't matter how big he is or how long his teeth are (how dominant he is, in other words), the females can gang up and chase him away.

On the male side, the dominance hierarchy seems to have little to do with how often or with whom a male mates. The important thing appears to be convincing some female you should be a troop member, usually through grooming. Says Kim Wallace, a primate biologist, "The model we have of low ranking animals striving to be high ranking animals probably really isn't accurate. The low ranking animals may be perfectly happy as long as they're getting mating opportunities and as long as they're getting fed."

In fact, the situation where the dominant animals are controlling the genetic destiny of the society would be an abnormal and unhealthy situation. Breeding high aggression and combativeness would risk destroying all the subtle, cooperative behaviors that hold a monkey troop together and ensure the survival of the whole society and its individuals over the long haul.

So letting some nasty, pushy individual full of bellicose juices get ahead of you at the water fountain may not be a sign of weakness but a sign of your strength in knowing the best way to maintain social harmony. Research shows that those individuals bound and determined to "win" at the water fountain are often high-strung, edgy, stress-prone characters not very good at reproducing, and not particularly well adapted. The monkey study indicates that the cooperative, less dominant types are the fittest mambers of society, if reproductive success is used as a measure.

However hewing to their understanding of Darwin's ideas, biologists and nature film makers have focused our attention not only on dominance behavior within a species but on the competitive predator-prey relationships between species. The result is that we have come to think of nature in the stereotype of a one-rule game, "red in tooth and claw." But what about the myriad ways that different species engage in collective creativity through coupling together feedback?

Focusing on this aspect, chaos scientists have found natural history to be filled with examples of what they call "coevolution." For example, 100 million years ago, nature evolved flowering plants with seeds enclosed in fruits, but at the same time animals who enjoyed eating the fruits had to evolve with them. The animals spreading the plants seeds fostered further experimentation, leading to new plant and animal species. The plant and animal evolution were coupled together in one system.

The rain forest is a delicate and intricate example of coevolution and cooperation. Everything from the fungi that feed on fallen trees to wildly plumed birds and leaf-cutter ants evolved in relation to each other and constantly collaborate with each other in incalculably subtle ways that ensure their mutual survival.

From the perspective of chaos theory, it is less important to notice how systems are in competition with each other than it is to notice how systems are nested within each other and inextricably linked. Competition is a reductionist and limited idea that doesn't begin to appreciate the deep creativity at work in nature.

Competition has become a mental cliche often used to describe behavior that isn't really competitive, reinforcing our belief that the central fact of life is competition. Are the people on the internet competing with each other? Some are but most aren't. It seems pretty clear that competition is not what is essentially driving that system, holding it together, making it vibrant.

Of course competition can be an important element in the way individuals interact. Athletes love the spirit of competition and become exhilarated when pitted against each other. But we should note that their competition takes place within a context of cooperation. Agreements by individuals to cooperate in teams and follow rules make competition possible. Sports fans cooperate by paying admission and cheering and singing together.

Beyond this, one of the most exciting sports experiences anyone can have is wathcing a team catch fire. Perhaps as a basketball game begins, the players of one team seem to be operating independently of one another, mechanically going through their routines, in effect competing among themselves. Then they suddenly undergo a transformation. One of them makes an inspired play that leads to a basket: At this instant a bifurcation point becomes amplified. Now the moves the players make seem cooupled together, all five teams members working like a single organism. In this creative self-organization we observe something more than just the competition between two teams.

Chaos theory tells us competition and cooperation are not either/or ideas. They are complexity interwoven.

A complex chaotic system like a rain forest or the human body contains a constantly unfolding creative dynamic in which what we call competition may suddenly become cooperation and vice versa. In chaotic systems, interconnections flow among individual elements on many different scales. In the body, these scales include molecules moving between cells, the cells themselves, tissues, organs, and distributed systems like the immune system and the endocrine system with its hormone secretions from various glands. Instead of seeing these scales of order in terms of competition, chaos focuses on how elements within systems and the relationships between systems are continually reassembling themselves on the edge of chaos."