* Book: EVOLUTION: From Big Bang to Nanorobots. Edited by: Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev. Vol. 4 of the Evolution Almanac. ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House, 2015. – 336 pp.

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"The present volume is the fourth issue of the Yearbook series entitled ‘Evolution’. The title of the present volume is ‘From Big Bang to Nanorobots’. In this way we demonstrate that all phases of evolution and Big History are covered in the articles of the present Yearbook. Several articles also present the forecasts about future development.

The main objective of our Yearbook as well as of the previous issues is the creation of a unified interdisciplinary field of research in which the scientists specializing in different disciplines could work within the framework of unified or similar paradigms, using the common terminology and searching for common rules, tendencies and regularities. At the same time for the formation of such an integrated field one should use all available opportunities: theories, laws and methods. In the present volume, a number of such approaches are used."

Leonid E. Grinin. ‘Cosmic Evolution and Universal Evolutionary Principles’. The given article attempts at combining Big History potential with the potential of Evolutionary Studies in order to achieve the following goals: 1) to apply the historical narrative principle to the description of the star-galaxy era of the cosmic phase of Big History; 2) to analyze both the cosmic history and similarities and differences between evolutionary laws, principles, and mechanisms at various levels and phases of Big History. We think that nobody has approached this task in a systemic way yet. It appears especially important to demonstrate that many evolutionary principles, patterns, regularities, and rules, which we tend to find relevant only for higher levels and main lines of evolution, can be also applied to cosmic evolution. Moreover, almost everything that we know about evolution may be detected in the cosmic history, whereas many of the evolutionary characteristics are already manifested here in a rather clear and salient way. Of course, many of the characteristics are manifested in initial or nonsystematic forms but some features, on the contrary, appear to be more distinct just in the cosmic phase. And at the same time when many characteristics and features which are typical of biological and social evolution unexpectedly reveal their roots or protoforms at earlier phases, one becomes aware that the universal character of evolution is real and it can be detected in a number of manifestations. One should also bear in mind that the origin of galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects is the lengthiest evolutionary process among all evolutionary processes in the Universe. Such an approach opens new perspectives for our understanding of evolution and Big History, of their driving forces, vectors, and trends, it also creates a consolidated field for the multidisciplinary research.

David LePoire. ‘Potential Nested Accelerating Returns Logistic Growth in Big History’. The discussions about the trends in rates of change, especially in technology, have led to a range of interpretations including accelerating rates of change and logistic progress. These models are reviewed and a new model is constructed that can be used to interpret Big History. This interpretation includes the increasing rates of the evolutionary events and phases of life, humans, and civilization. These three phases, previously identified by others, have different information processing mechanisms (genes, brains, and writing). The accelerating returns aspect of the new model replicates the exponential part of the progress as the transitions in these three phases started roughly 5 billion, 5 million, and 5,000 years ago. Each of these three phases might be composed of a further level of about six nested transitions with each transition proceeding faster by a factor of about three with corresponding changes in free energy flow and organization to handle the increased generation rate of entropy from the system. Nested logistic transitions have been observed before, for example in the ongoing exploration of fundamental physics, where the progress so far suggests the complete transition will include about 7 nested transitions (sets of subfields). The reason for this number of nested transitions within a larger transition is not known, although it may be related to the initial step of understanding a fraction of the full problem. Too small of an initial fraction would lead to incomplete problem scope and definition. Too large of an initial step would lead to complications between the development of basic understanding and higher level derivations. An original step of one-seventh of the problem ends up within one standard deviation from the inflection point (mid-way through the transition).

David Christian. ‘Universal Darwinism and Human History’. This essay discusses Universal Darwinism: the idea that Darwinian mechanisms can explain interesting evolutionary change in many different domains, in both the Humanities and the Natural Sciences. The idea should appeal to Big Historians because it links research into evolutionary change at many different scales. But the detailed workings of Universal Darwinism vary as it drives different vehicles, just as internal combustion engines differ in chain-saws, motor cycles and airplane engines. To extend Darwin's ideas beyond the biological realm, we must disentangle the biological version of the Darwinian mechanism from several other forms. The paper focuses particularly on Universal Darwinism as a form of learning, a way of accumulating information. This will make it easier to make the adjustments needed to explore Darwinian mechanisms in human history.

David Baker. ‘Collective Learning as a Key Concept in Big History’. One of the key concepts for the human part of the grand narrative is known as ‘collective learning’. It is a very prominent broad trend that sweeps across all human history. Collective learning to a certain degree distinguishes us as a species; it got us out of Africa and the foraging lifestyle of the Palaeolithic, and underpinned demographic cycles and human progress for over 250,000 years. The present article considers at collective learning as a concept, its evolution within hominine species, as well as its role in human demography and the two great revolutions in human history: agriculture and industry. The paper then goes on to explain the connection of collective learning to Jared Diamond's ‘Tasmanian Effect’. Collective learning also played a key role in the two ‘Great Divergences’ of the past two thousand years. One is industry and the rise of the West, described to great effect by Kenneth Pommeranz, the other is the less well known: the burst of demography and innovation in Song China at the turn of the second millennium AD. Finally, the paper concludes with insights into how collective learning forges a strong connection between human history and cosmology, geology, and biology, through what is widely recognized as one of the ‘unifying themes’ of Big History – the rise of complexity in the Universe.

Craig Benjamin. ‘Collective Learning and the Silk Roads’. The Silk Roads are the quintessential example of the interconnectedness of civilizations during the Era of Agrarian Civilizations, and the exchanges that occurred along them resulted in the most significant collective learning so far experienced by the human species. The primary function of the Silk Roads was to facilitate trade, but the intellectual, social, and artistic exchanges that resulted had an even greater impact on collective learning. The Silk Roads also illustrate another key theme in Big History – evolving complexity at all scales. Just as the early universe was simple until contingent circumstances made it possible for more complex entities to appear, and that the relatively simple single-cell organisms of early life on the planet were able to evolve into an extraordinary, complex biodiversity, so human communities and the connections between them followed

similar trajectories. The comingling of so many goods, ideas, and diseases around a geographical hub located deep in central Eurasia was the catalyst for an extraordinary increase in the complexity of human relationships and collective learning, a complexity that helped drive our species inexorably along a path towards the modern revolution.

Section II. Biosocial Evolution, Ecological Aspects, and Consciousness consists of five contributions.

Andrey V. Korotayev, Alexander V. Markov, and Leonid E. Grinin. ‘Modeling of Biological and Social Phases of Big History’. In the first part of this article we survey general similarities and differences between biological and social macroevolution. In the second (and main) part, we consider a concrete mathematical model capable of describing important features of both biological and social macroevolution. In mathematical models of historical macrodynamics, a hyperbolic pattern of world population growth arises from non-linear, second-order positive feedback between demographic growth and technological development. Based on diverse paleontological data and an analogy with macrosociological models, the authors suggest that the hyperbolic character of biodiversity growth can be similarly accounted for by non-linear, second-order positive feedback between diversity growth and the complexity of community structure. They discuss how such positive feedback mechanisms can be modelled mathematically.

Alexander D. Panov. ‘Prebiological Panspermia and the Hypothesis of the Self-Consistent Galaxy Origin of Life’. The author argues that the panspermia can mean not only the other place of the origin of life but also another mechanism of the origin of life that increases the probability of the origin of life to many orders compared to a single-planet prebiological evolution. The prebiological evolution can be an all-Galaxy coherent process due to the fact that prebiological panspermia and the origin of life are similar to Galaxy-scale second-order phase transition. This mechanism predicts life to have the same chemical base and the same chirality everywhere in the Galaxy.

Olga A. Sorokina and Rendt Gorter. ‘Social Evolution of Humankind as an Integral Part of the Evolution of the Biosphere’. A theoretical reconceptualization of social evolution is proposed in order to construct the principles for socio-economic governance that can expand the resilience of global systems that in turn determine the world's carrying capacity for the human population. Big History approach shows how world societies are in a transition phase that can be explained using evolutionary laws with the understanding that the development of human civilization is considered as an integral part of the evolution of the Earth's biosphere.

Michael Charles Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison. ‘The “Ahimsa Factor”: Ecological Non-Violence Process Analysis in China and its Implications for Global Paradigmatic Shifts’.

The world is witnessing the sixth extinction spasm in the annals of 4.2 billion years of life on Earth. We lose some 40,000 discrete populations of organisms every day. Species and habitat loss exceeds anything comparable during the last 65 million years. The human population is poised to hit between 9.5 billion and – in the absolute worst case scenario, 15 billion – with all of its accompanying consumption. A new global paradigm that can set the gold standard for ecologically-humble human behavior is urgently required and the nation of China – the largest country in human history, by far – has the potential to set in motion the global processes that are a prerequisite to a new gold standard for rectification of ecological violence. This will be no easy challenge, to be sure. In this essay the authors examine some of the comprehensive biodiversity, global trade, ecological degradation, demographic and animal rights challenges facing the China of 2013 and suggest some solutions.

Ilya V. Ponomariov. ‘Situational Binding and Inner Speech: CrossSectional Evidences’. Different evidences of inner speech development are gathered and discussed from the perspective of situational binding – a conception developed within the framework of cultural-historical tradition of L. S. Vygotsky. This conception explains and systematizes many facts which have otherwise caused much perplexity to scientific knowledge. It predicts that the future neurobiological research of inner speech in non-school societies should discover that it has fragmentary and sympractical character.

Section III. Projects for the Future contains three articles.

Valentina M. Bondarenko. ‘Governing the Time will Govern Development – or, “Territory of Faster Development: Everything for People” Megaproject Realization Proposals’. The author substantiates the thesis that the contemporary scientific knowledge has exhausted its explanatory potentials and does not contribute to definition of the objective causes of the emerging systemic crisis in Russia and in the world. Hence, such knowledge does not help to conduct the search and to substantiate transition to the new economic growth model, although Russia in its current condition is doomed to stagnation, further slow-down of growth rates, increase in unemployment and poverty. As argued further on in the article, only by reaching the visionary level of understanding the roots of the emerging systemic crisis and all other problems it has become possible to form the methodology for cognition of regularities in the human system development, and then, basing on the given methodology, to substantiate the need and possibility to realize the megaproject of ‘Territory of Faster Development: Everything for People’.

Vasily N. Vasilenko. ‘The Noospheric Concept of Evolution, Globalization and Big History’.

The followers of Vladimir I. Vernadsky's ideas claim that the relevance of the biospheric concept is increasing, as well as the biosphere-noosphere transition, thereby providing public safety and reaching sustainable development. Philosophical, ontological and futurological nationwide recognition of Vernadsky's legacy is proved by including the 150th anniversary of Vladimir Vernadsky in the UNESCO calendar of anniversaries under the title ‘Noospheric Thinking – the 21st Century Thinking’. The author considers the issues of Evolution, globalization and Big History from the perspective of noospheric paradigm. The issues deal with the future development of the civilization within the Earth's biosphere. In order to take into account ecological threats for citizens in different regions of the planet, the criterion of noospheric approach to globalization challenges was chosen.

Anton L. Grinin and Leonid E. Grinin. ‘Cybernetic Revolution and Forthcoming Technological Transformations (the Development of the Leading Technologies in the Light of the Theory of Production Revolutions)’. The article analyzes the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries and forecasts the main shifts in the next half a century. On the basis of the analysis of the latest achievements in innovative technological directions and also on the basis of the opportunities provided by the theory of production revolutions the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. They offer some forecasts about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the 21st century. It is shown that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that at first the transition to the beginning of the final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution will start in the field of medicine (in its some innovative directions). In future we will deal with the start of convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MBNRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, bio- and nanotechnologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The article gives a detailed analysis of the future breakthroughs in medicine, and also in bio- and nanotechnologies in terms of the development of self-regulating systems with their growing ability to select optimum modes of functioning as well as of other characteristics of the Cybernetic Revolution (resources and energy saving, miniaturization, and individualization).

* Section IV. In Memoriam is devoted to George Modelski.

George Modelski was an outstanding American social scientist and world historian. He contributed to an impressive number of different research questions. Throughout a long and distinguished career, George Modelski emphasized the need to bring together theory, evidence, and history in the unraveling of the World System evolution. Although never widely cited or known in wide circles of social scientists, his contributions were always distinctively different and original.

I. Universal Evolutionary Principles

Grinin, Leonid

Cosmic Evolution and Universal Evolutionary Principles

LePoire, David

Potential Nested Accelerating Returns Logistic Growth in Big History

Christian, David G.

Universal Darwinism and Human History ad

Baker, David

Collective Learning as a Key Concept in Big History

Benjamin, Craig

Collective Learning and the Silk Roads

II. Biosocial Evolution, Ecological Aspects, and Consciousness

Korotayev, Andrey; Markov, Alexander V.; Grinin, Leonid

Modeling of Biological and Social Phases of Big History

Panov, Alexander

Prebiological Panspermia and the Hypothesis of the Self-Consistent Galaxy Origin of Life

Sorokina, Olga A.; Gorter, Rendt

Social Evolution of Humankind as an Integral Part of the Evolution of the Biosphere

Tobias, Michael C.; Morrison, Jane Gray

The ‘Ahimsa Factor’: Ecological Non-Violence Process Analysis in China and Its Implications for Global Paradigmatic Shifts

Ponomariov, Ilya V.

Situational Binding and Inner Speech: Cross-Sectional Evidences

III. Projects for the Future

Bondarenko, Valentina

Governing the Time Will Govern Development – or, ‛Territory of Faster Development: Everything for People’ Megaproject Realization Proposals

Vasilenko, Vasily N.

The Noospheric Concept of Evolution, Globalization and Big History

Grinin, Anton L. ; Grinin, Leonid

Cybernetic Revolution and Forthcoming Technological Transformations (The Development of the Leading Technologies in the Light of the Theory of Production Revolutions)

Evolution from the Big Bang to Nanorobots

Contents

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Contents

ToC

I. Universal Evolutionary Principles

II. Biosocial Evolution, Ecological Aspects, and Consciousness

III. Projects for the Future

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