When Replicators Unite

question

How far can the logic of *major evolutionary transitions* — where independently replicating units cooperate to form higher-level individuals — help us understand cooperation, conflict, and coordination in *social systems* and *digital federations* such as Federated Wiki? Does this analogy illuminate real mechanisms of socio-cultural evolution, or does it fail because social evolution operates only on a single, world-society case and not on populations in the biological sense?

claim

Concepts from biological major evolutionary transitions can illuminate cooperation in social and digital systems, but only if we recognize a crucial discontinuity: socio-cultural evolution is *non-Darwinian in structure*, operating on a **single unfolding case (world society)** rather than on large ensembles of competing populations. Thus, the analogy reveals mechanisms (alignment, communication, division of labor, boundary formation) while simultaneously requiring strict limits to avoid naturalizing political choices.

support

**1. Biological transitions reveal recurring mechanisms of cooperation.** When genes → genomes, cells → multicellular bodies, or organisms → eusocial colonies, we observe the same structural motifs: alignment of incentives, suppression of internal conflict, division of labor, and emergence of a coordinating communication system. These motifs provide conceptual tools for understanding how formerly independent contributors in a wiki or social system can form a coherent cooperative unit (Ward’s “Wiki Nature”). (Reference: *When Replicators Unite*, West et al.) **2. Federated Wiki expresses analogous cooperative architecture.** Ward describes wiki pages as “cells” with permeable “walls” (license, forks), communication channels (links, lineups), and differentiation (curators, gardeners, forkers). This mirrors the biological transition from individual replicators to a coordinated organism-like community. Cooperation emerges not through central control but through boundary conditions that allow thought-cells to persist, recombine, and specialize. **3. Luhmann’s social systems theory reinforces the analogy while tightening constraints.** Luhmann holds that social evolution does not operate on individuals but on **communications**. A cooperative “unit” forms when communications recursively relate and stabilize. This corresponds to the biological rule that individuality emerges from stabilized patterns, not from intrinsic substances. The wiki’s iterated forking, linking, and rewriting forms precisely such recursive stabilization. **4. Socio-cultural evolution differs fundamentally from biological evolution.** World society today is **one system**, not many. There are no parallel societies evolving under separate selection environments. This undermines the standard biological picture of selection among populations. Socio-cultural evolution is historically path-dependent, self-referential, and normatively mediated. Thus, biological analogies must be interpreted as **heuristic motifs**, not as laws. **5. The cancer metaphor (Levin) clarifies failure modes.** Levin’s model shows that multicellular cooperation breaks down when sub-units pursue independent goals (“self-divided”). Analogously, social or digital systems can experience failure modes when boundaries break, incentives misalign, or communication collapses. The analogy helps diagnose systemic fragility without claiming that social systems literally share biological mechanisms. **6. Wiki collaboration as “writing with strangers” fits the transition logic.** Ward’s “Writing with Strangers” describes distributed cooperation where individuality is not lost but integrated through structures (“forking,” citation lineage, accretion of thought). This matches the biological motif of **individual persistence within collective integration**, a hallmark of major transitions.

oppose

**1. The analogy risks biological reductionism.** Social cooperation is normatively structured, intentional, and meaning-laden. To treat participants as replicators with sub-goals may obscure the fundamentally communicative nature of social systems (Luhmann) and the political stakes involved in cooperation. **2. Social evolution does not have replicator competition.** In contrast to biology, world society is **one evolving unit**, not many. There is no Darwinian selection across societies. Therefore, mechanisms of suppression of internal competition or alignment cannot be imported uncritically from multi-population evolutionary theory. **3. Cooperation in human systems includes reflexivity and disagreement.** Humans negotiate norms, contest authority, and resist alignment. This contrasts with biological transitions where conflict reduction is structural and non-negotiated. Human cooperation often relies on institutions of dissent, not just mechanisms of alignment. **4. Digital systems are intentionally designed, not emergent.** Federated Wiki is engineered with boundary designs, protocols, and affordances. Biological transitions, by contrast, arise without foresight. Analogies may therefore hide the role of design choices, ownership models, governance, and power. **5. Cancer analogies rhetorically pathologize dissent.** Using the cancer metaphor for social conflict risks moralizing or medicalizing political disagreements. It must be disciplined: failure of cooperation ≠ pathology of agents.