Sociont
This entry was produced by z.ai, prompted by Michel Bauwens, based on the essays in the bibliography.
Description
The sociont is a theoretical construct denoting a socio-organism—a collective entity that emerges when human social organization attains a level of integration sufficient to constitute a higher-level evolutionary individual. The term was introduced by Claes Andersson and Tamás Czárán in the context of their “social protocell hypothesis,” which models the transition from animal to human culture as an evolutionary transition in individuality. According to their computational simulations, the sociont “emerged as soon as human bands became incorporated in tribes with distinct culture, namely earlier than 0.5 Ma, and possibly even 2 Ma.” The concept thus positions human social organization not merely as an aggregate of individuals, but as a candidate for a genuine new level of biological or socio-cultural individuality—an entity in its own right within the nested hierarchy that major evolutionary transitions are understood to produce.
Etymologically, “sociont” fuses “socio-” (pertaining to society or social relations) with the ontological suffix “-ont” (as in organism or agent), signaling that the entity in question possesses a degree of cohesion, integration, and functional differentiation comparable to that of an organism. Unlike the older term “superorganism,” which emphasizes scale and aggregation, “sociont” foregrounds the question of individuality—whether the social whole meets the criteria for being an evolutionary individual in the technical sense employed in discussions of major evolutionary transitions.
History
The idea that human society might constitute an organism-like entity has a long and contested intellectual history. Herbert Spencer, in 1882, explicitly equated human society with a (super)organism, drawing analogies between social institutions and biological organs. Jacob von Uexküll and colleagues extended this line of thought in 1926, further developing the organicist metaphor for social systems. These formulations, however, were subsequently debated and largely brought into disrepute within the biological and social sciences, in part because the analogies were seen as overly simplistic and in part because they carried politically uncomfortable implications about the subordination of individuals to a social whole.
Despite this disrepute, the superorganism concept never entirely disappeared. E.O. Wilson’s work on insect eusociality reinvigorated the term in the 1970s, and the Gaia hypothesis—developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis—revived organismic thinking at the planetary scale. In recent decades, the question has re-emerged in a more rigorous form, reframed through the lens of major evolutionary transitions theory. The central question is no longer whether society is “like” an organism in a metaphorical sense, but whether human social organization has undergone—or is undergoing—a genuine evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI), producing a new level of biological or socio-cultural organization that satisfies the formal criteria for individuality developed in the transitions literature.
Discussion
The Sociont and Major Evolutionary Transitions
The sociont concept is situated within the theoretical framework of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) and, more specifically, Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality (ETI). Major evolutionary transitions are events in the history of life in which previously independent replicating entities become integrated into a higher-level individual—as when prokaryotes gave rise to eukaryotes via endosymbiosis, or when single cells formed multicellular organisms. Each transition produces a new level in the hierarchy of biological organization, with the higher-level entity eventually coming to function as a unit of selection in its own right.
The question of whether humans have undergone such a transition was the subject of a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2023), titled “Human Socio-Cultural Evolution in Light of Evolutionary Transitions,” edited by Carmel, Shavit, Lamm, and Szathmáry.
The issue was organized around four perspectives:
(1) the general theory of ETIs (three papers),
(2) the unique aspects of cultural evolution (six papers),
(3) the evolutionary history and prehistory of humans (four papers), and
(4) specific routes of a possible human ETI (three papers).
This structure reflects the field’s recognition that human social evolution presents distinctive challenges—particularly the role of culture, language, and symbolic inheritance—that may not be fully captured by frameworks developed for earlier transitions.
The sociont, in this context, represents the hypothesized outcome of a human ETI: a social individual that emerges when human groups become sufficiently integrated—through division of labor, shared cultural inheritance, coordinated communication, and interdependent economic organization—that the collective functions as a unit of evolutionary dynamics. Whether such an entity genuinely exists, and whether the conditions for a full transition have been met, remains the central point of contention.
The Agricultural Revolution as Evolutionary Transition
Lisi Krall, in her contribution to the Royal Society special issue, argues that the Neolithic transition to grain agriculture constituted an evolutionary transition that restructured human societies into a new whole—an “economic superorganism.” Krall’s thesis is that agriculture did not merely increase the scale of human social organization but fundamentally transformed its structure, creating a system in which human groups became expansionary and structurally interdependent. The economic superorganism, on this view, is characterized by permanent growth imperatives, specialized division of labor, and a degree of coordination and dependency among parts that parallels the functional integration of a multicellular organism.
This argument draws on and extends the earlier work of Gowdy and Krall (2016) on the “economic origins of ultrasociality.” Ultrasociality, as defined in that work, refers to the most social of animal organizations—those exhibiting full-time division of labor, specialists who contribute no direct subsistence but are provisioned by others, effective sharing of information, and self-sacrificial effort in collective defense. In the human case, ultrasociality is driven not by genetic inheritance alone but by the economic structure of surplus production, which locks societies into expansionary dynamics. As Gowdy and Krall observe, “Evolutionary systems cannot see ahead. The ultrasocial system cannot see whether it is locked into an unsustainable resource use pattern.” This inability to anticipate the long-term consequences of its own structure is a hallmark of evolutionary processes—and, paradoxically, one of the reasons to think that the economic superorganism may qualify as a genuine evolutionary entity, even if its trajectory is self-undermining.
Krall poses the crucial question: “Is the agricultural revolution an evolutionary transition adequately captured in existing frameworks of human social evolution? Is the human capacity for culture sufficient to override the power and dynamic of the economic superorganism?” These questions remain open, and their answers bear directly on whether the sociont is a genuine individual or a compelling but ultimately misleading analogy.
The Social Protocell Hypothesis
Andersson and Czárán’s contribution to the Royal Society issue introduces the “social protocell hypothesis” and offers a computational model of the transition from animal to human culture. The protocell analogy is borrowed from origin-of-life research, where protocells are understood as precursors to full biological cells—bounded, self-maintaining systems that are not yet cells but exhibit some of the properties required for cellular individuality. In Andersson and Czárán’s social analogue, human bands are the “protocells” of social organization: semi-bounded groups with shared cultural practices that are not yet integrated into a higher-level individual, but which possess the necessary preconditions for such integration.
Their simulations model the process by which bands become incorporated into larger tribal structures with distinct cultures. The key result is that this incorporation produces a qualitative shift in the organization of social life—a transition from loosely coupled, relatively autonomous groups to a more tightly integrated system with shared symbolic inheritance, coordinated behavior, and functional differentiation. It is this transition that, on their account, marks the emergence of the sociont. The dating of this event—earlier than 0.5 million years ago, and possibly as early as 2 million years ago—places it well before the agricultural revolution, suggesting that the sociont, if it exists, is far older than the economic superorganism. This raises the question of whether the agricultural transition represents a further major transition within the sociont (analogous to the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote within the cell lineage) rather than the original emergence of the sociont itself.
The AI–Human Symbiosis Route
Paul B. Rainey, in his contribution to the Royal Society issue, considers possible routes by which a human evolutionary transition in individuality might occur, and identifies one particularly provocative possibility: that “a higher-level organism may emerge as a symbiosis between humans and some form of artificial intelligence (AI).” This proposal draws on the established role of symbiosis in major evolutionary transitions—most notably the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts, which were key events in the transition from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells. The analogy suggests that AI might play a role analogous to the symbiont in an endosymbiotic event: an initially independent entity that becomes so deeply integrated into the functioning of the human social system that the resulting human–AI composite constitutes a new level of individuality.
This scenario differs from more familiar visions of AI displacement or augmentation in that it posits not simply that AI will enhance human capabilities, but that the integration of human and AI systems could be so profound that the resulting composite entity would meet the criteria for a new evolutionary individual—a sociont of a higher order than the one that may have emerged with the incorporation of human bands into tribes. Whether such a transition is plausible, what its preconditions would be, and whether it would be recognized as an ETI in the formal sense are all open questions. Rainey’s contribution is significant less for the certainty of its prediction than for its demonstration that the theoretical framework of major transitions can accommodate radically novel routes to higher-level individuality, routes that do not depend solely on biological or cultural evolution as traditionally understood.
Sceptical Perspectives
Daniel W. McShea, in his contribution to the Royal Society issue, offers a sustained and systematic argument against the claim that humans have undergone a major transition in social individuality. He identifies four reasons for scepticism, each targeting a different aspect of the transition claim:
The hierarchy objection
The foundation of major transitions is hierarchy: lower-level individuals are subsumed within higher-level individuals in a nested, non-cross-cutting structure. In biological transitions (cells within organisms, organisms within colonies), the parts are clearly contained within the whole. Human social organization, however, is rife with cross-cutting interactions—individuals belong to multiple overlapping groups (economic, political, cultural, familial) that do not nest neatly within one another. This undermines the hierarchical structure that major transitions are understood to produce.
The selection mode objection
Natural selection operates in three modes: stability (persistence without growth), growth (increase in size or number without reproduction), and reproductive success (production of offspring that establish independent lineages). For a genuine ETI, the higher-level entity must eventually become a unit of selection in the reproductive mode—it must be capable of “reproducing” in some meaningful sense. McShea argues that human societies probably evolve mainly in the stability and growth modes: they persist and they expand, but they do not reproduce in the way that organisms or colonies do. Without selection in the reproductive mode, the criteria for a full transition are not met.
The differentiation objection
Highly individuated entities are marked by division of labor and, crucially, by commitment to morphological differentiation—the parts of a multicellular organism are not merely functionally specialized but are structurally different in ways that are largely irreversible. In human societies, by contrast, differentiation is mostly behavioral and reversible: an individual may change occupation, social role, or group membership, and the “parts” of society are not morphologically committed to their functional roles. This reversibility contrasts sharply with the irreversible differentiation that characterizes biological individuals.
The complexity drain objection
A well-established empirical pattern in major transitions is that as higher-level individuals arise, selection “drains complexity” from the lower-level individuals: the cells of a multicellular organism are simpler and less autonomous than free-living single cells. If human societies represent a genuine higher-level individual, then analogous complexity drain should be observable in individual humans. McShea argues that there is little evidence of this—individual humans are not notably less complex or less autonomous than their pre-social ancestors. The absence of complexity drain is, on his view, a significant mark against the transition hypothesis.
Open Questions
The sociont concept, as it currently stands, raises more questions than it resolves. Several of the most pressing are worth highlighting, as they define the frontier of the debate and indicate directions for future research.
Is the sociont a genuine evolutionary individual or an analogy? The most fundamental question is whether the organismic properties of human social organization—division of labor, communication networks, interdependency—are sufficient to establish the sociont as a real individual in the evolutionary sense, or whether they are merely analogical, reflecting superficial similarities without the deeper structural and dynamic properties that characterize true evolutionary individuals. The tension between Krall’s and Andersson & Czárán’s arguments on one side and McShea’s objections on the other turns precisely on this question.
Can cultural evolution override economic lock-in? If the agricultural revolution created an economic superorganism with expansionary dynamics that are blind to their own long-term sustainability, then the question arises whether human cultural capacity—our ability to reflect, deliberate, and consciously reshape our institutions—can override the structural momentum of the economic superorganism. Gowdy and Krall’s analysis suggests that it cannot, or at least that the capacity for foresight is itself a product of the very evolutionary dynamics that produced the lock-in. This question has immediate practical implications for sustainability and climate change.
Is an AI–human symbiosis a plausible transition route? Rainey’s proposal opens the possibility that a further major transition could occur through the integration of human and AI systems. But the conditions under which such a symbiosis would constitute a genuine ETI—as opposed to a mere tool-using relationship—are unclear. The question is not whether AI will transform human society, but whether the transformation will produce a new level of individuality, and if so, whether individual humans would be analogous to the cells of an organism (integrated but subordinated) or to symbionts in a mutualistic partnership.
What is the relationship between the sociont and earlier transitions? If the sociont emerged with the incorporation of bands into tribes (0.5–2 Ma), and the agricultural revolution represents a further restructuring, then the sociont may itself have undergone internal transitions—raising the question of whether we are dealing with a single entity that has evolved through multiple phases, or with a succession of distinct higher-level individuals. This question parallels debates in evolutionary biology about whether certain transitions (e.g., the origin of the eukaryotic cell) are single events or composites of multiple sub-transitions.
More information
Annotated Bibliography
(1) Carmel, Y., Shavit, A., Lamm, E., & Szathmáry, E. (2023). Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions: Introduction to the theme issue. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1872), 20210397.
This introductory article frames the entire special issue and provides the four-part organizational structure (general ETI theory, cultural evolution, human prehistory, specific transition routes) that situates the sociont within the broader landscape of major transitions research.
(2) Krall, L. (2023). The economic superorganism in the complexity of evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1872), 20210417.
Argues that the Neolithic agricultural revolution created an economic superorganism by restructuring human societies into expansionary, structurally interdependent wholes. Central to the claim that a genuine evolutionary transition occurred with agriculture.
(3) Andersson, C., & Czárán, T. (2023). The transition from animal to human culture—Simulating the social protocell hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1872), 20210416.
Introduces the sociont concept and the social protocell hypothesis. Provides computational simulations showing how the incorporation of human bands into culturally distinct tribes could produce a transition in individuality, dating the emergence of the
(4) Rainey, P.B. (2023). Major evolutionary transitions in individuality between humans and AI. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 378(1872), 20210408.
Proposes that a higher-level organism could emerge through symbiosis between humans and AI, drawing an analogy to endosymbiotic events in earlier major transitions. Opens the possibility of a future transition route not dependent on biological or cultural evolution alone.
(5) McShea, D.W. (2023). Four reasons for scepticism about a human major transition in social individuality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Presents the most thorough sceptical case: four objections (hierarchy, selection mode, differentiation, complexity drain) arguing that human social organization does not meet the formal criteria for an evolutionary transition in individuality.
(6) Gowdy, J., & Krall, L. (2016). The economic origins of ultrasociality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e92.
Develops the theory that ultrasociality in humans is driven by economic structure rather than genetic inheritance alone, and that the resulting system is locked into expansionary dynamics that it cannot foresee or override. Provides the theoretical foundation for Krall’s 2023 argument about the economic superorganism.