Chapter 3: Social Evolution: State of the Field

Placing Earth into the largest possible context is easier in some ways than others. High school students can identify the place of our Sun in the typology of stars. We know our solar system's mailing address within our galaxy, and how to find our galaxy within the local group neighborhood. We can study our home world's geology and atmosphere objectively, and classify Earth appropriately in the ever-growing list of extrasolar planets. Our knowledge of other stars, galaxies, and planets changes, but we have observed external realities in relation to which we can locate ourselves.

It becomes more difficult when we discuss life, because, at the time of writing, none of any kind has been discovered elsewhere. We are, for the moment, still positioning Earth s life in relation to ideas - rumored phantoms which have yet to materialize in our view, no matter how logically likely they might be. So, when we discuss intelligent life-forms with technological societies in the absolute absence of extraterrestrial cases, we are philosophically and scientifically adrift. We can mark Earth s physical coordinates on the galactic map, and we can find our star and planet in tables and typologies, but we cannot, in any way, position human civilization in relation to any other technological civilization.

And yet, while we wait for data about extraterrestrial intelligence with which to anchor ourselves, we muse about our place in the cosmos. We bold sketch our hypothetical neighbors, debate how we might find them, guess what they might be thinking and doing, and wonder what we should say to them. These speculations are driven simultaneously by our knowledge of their potential neighborhoods (planetary systems and habitable zones), and our knowledge of ourselves (our own planet, its biota, and societies). With respect to imagining life and civilizations elsewhere, we are, therefore, caught between logics that tug in different directions and do not easily mesh.

This poses significant challenges. For example, the processes of working downwards from generalities about the universe, and working upwards from the particularities of Earth, promote competing perspectives about our place in the cosmos. Few thinkers can effectively balance both. The balancing act requires scholars from the humanities and social sciences to expand their horizons and wonder whether we can simultaneously be intelligent agents determining our own futures, dwelling in historical time with all its contingencies, and part of much larger patterns with knowable rules and predictable outcomes. It also requires scholars primarily trained in the physical sciences to take a closer look at Earth s societies to develop the most nuanced understanding possible of the data and theory we have at our disposal and to consider how, exactly, knowledge of our own case might relate to other cases.

In this chapter, I attempt to facilitate the latter task by providing an overview of some of the most difficult, contentious, and promising areas in social evolution research, as pertinent to culture in the cosmos. The modern literature about social evolution runs many disciplines wide and several centuries deep; so this is necessarily a selective review, shaped by my own perspective that is rooted in anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and the history and philosophy of science. Much of the chapter addresses background issues relevant to the general problem of integrating social evolution on Earth into syntheses about cosmic evolution and to the particular problem of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). I begin with some essential preliminaries about social evolution and SETI the data, competing epistemologies, why social evolution matters, motivations for studying social change, and disciplinary differences. The challenges of researching social evolution are best illustrated in context, so I then provide an extended case study which examines approaches to the perennially fascinating subject of collapse. In the remaining sections, I briefly review the current status of selected relevant debates in the method and theory of social evolutionary studies including the relationship of biology and culture, a new Modern Synthesis/Holistic Darwinism, complexity theory, hologeistic studies, interactions between civilizations, the roles of contingency and convergence, and the lifetimes of civilizations. I conclude that there are many promising routes forward. The blossoming of new theoretical perspectives which accommodate complex systems, the development of improved tools for studying the history of societies on Earth, and our increased awareness of our own subjectivities in these studies will enable ever-better investigations of how civilizations develop, interact, and expire or endure.