= "the theory of major evolutionary transitions provides the directional logic and historical precedent for understanding how formerly independent units become integrated into higher-level cooperative entities". [1]

Description

Clement Vidal:

"METs depict the few moments in the history of life where radical novelty and change has happened. These include the origin of life itself, eukaryote cells, multicellular organisms, sexual reproduction, cultural transmission, mental modelling and, as a growing number of evolutionary scientists are recognizing and debating, the emergence of a kind of planetary superorganism.

..

The core challenge for an MET to succeed is that it has to solve the cooperation barrier (Stewart, 2000). This requires the emergence of a new metasystem that can deploy control mechanisms suppressing free-riding and promoting cooperative processes (Turchin, 1977). Obviously, the specific implementation of such control mechanisms varies with each transition. Once the cooperation barrier is solved, division of labour can start, and matter–energy distribution (the distributor in Living Systems Theory) and information flows (channel and net in LST) need to be present to coordinate the differentiated parts."

(https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sres.2997)

Status

" We see the planetary cooperation barrier as the current frontier of this evolutionary trajectory

- Clement Vidal [2]

Typology

David Ronfeldt on four MET's:

" * The first double MET occurred when the oral information-communications revolution enabled the tribal form to take hold many millennia ago.

The second, when writing and printing enabled the hierarchical institutional form to consolidate a couple millennia ago.

The third when the electrical information-communications revolution (telephony, telegraphy, ticker tape, etc.) enabled the market form to establish its place in the mix a couple centuries ago. As societies advanced through these three METs, so did the noosphere’s formation.

Today we are on the threshold of a fourth double MET: an MET about the spread of new network forms of organization (e.g., +N) enabled by advanced digital and post-digital information-communications technologies that increasingly involve AI systems.

It may be fourth in this series, but it will be the first MET where the noosphere gains a globe-circling thickening presence and begins to develop, and reveals that it is going to develop, entities and dynamics of its own, separate from the geosphere and biosphere. The noosphere’s development is still in a thin phase where it is still mostly a phenomenon emerging from the biosphere (plus the sociosphere and technosphere as bridging realms). There are long ways to go, maybe a century or two, before the noosphere becomes thick and dense enough to become as distinct and separate a realm as the geosphere and biosphere have become, with its own entities and dynamics. Autonomous super-intelligent AIs look to become decisive forces and factors in all this (to the point where calling them AIs may no longer be accurate)."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/our-worlds-ballooning-noosphere-3)

Discussion

MET's should be called METTS

David Ronfeldt:

"RETHINK MAJOR EVOLUTIONARY TRANSITIONS (METS)

METs appear in all areas of evolution that I keep in mind — geological, biological, societal, and noospheric evolution. In my view, METs occur when new forms of organization and interaction arise amid existing forms, sparking innovative new processes of combination, differentiation, and re-structuration, thereby creating more complex, more capable, higher-level forms (entities). Oft-cited examples include the progressions from single to multicellular organisms, and from ancient tribal communities to modern nation-states (Szathmáry and Smith 1995).

I have complaints about the MET theorizing I’ve seen so far — too much emphasis on increases in levels of complexity, too little notice that the generation of new levels requires new forms of complexity to emerge in parallel to older forms. I’d also like the T in MET to mean “transformation” instead of “transition” — better yet, reformulate MET as METT to stand for “major evolutionary transitions and transformations.”

Be that as it may, here are two ond-related points for now:

(1) All METs involve changes in the nature of bonds and bonding powers, along with shifts in what can connect and combine with what.

(2) MET theorists have not noticed (not that I can find) that changes in bonds and bonding powers are crucial for societal METs to unfold and end well.

At most, changes in bonds and bonding powers (valences) receive only marginal mentions, even in regard to biological METs.

Whoever continues theorizing about METs, including myself, would be well-advised to include bonds and bonding dynamics in their efforts. This calls for systematic new theorizing."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/peoples-yearnings-to-bond-part-2)

'Axial Entities of the Noosphere as the Fourth 'Major Evolutionary Transition'

David Ronfeldt:

"This will be a "Fourth Major Evolutionary Transition” (MET) from a TIMN and NOO perspective.

The first occurred when the oral information-communications revolution enabled the tribal form to take hold ages ago;

The second, when writing and printing enabled the hierarchical institutional form to consolidate a couple millennia ago;

The third when the electrical information-communications revolution (telephony, telegraphy, etc.) enabled the market form to establish itself in the mix a couple centuries ago. As societies advanced through these METs, so did the noosphere’s formation.

Today we are still on the threshold of a fourth socio-cultural MET: an MET about the spread of the network form enabled by digital and post-digital information-communications technologies. During 1993-1996, when I first wrote about an eventual +N transition, I wasn’t thinking about AIs being important for this. I now sense they may be crucial.

Winning the struggles to add a commons realm, then constructing it alongside the existing three realms (again: civil society, government, market economy) will be a daunting endeavor. It may require far more advanced information, communications, and other noospheric capabilities than I first supposed. Vast world-wide networks will have to be built for monitoring, processing, and sharing all sorts of inputs about all sorts of conditions — environmental, societal, holospheric, etc. This surely can’t and won’t be done without the participation of AIs and socio-noospheric entities like AEONs."

(https://davidronfeldt.substack.com/p/updates-about-superorganisms-holospheres)

Major Evolutionary Transition

Contents