ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2023
Four reasons for scepticism about a human major transition in social individuality.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Major transitions in sociocultural evolution.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Conditions that favour cumulative cultural evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions: introduction to the theme issue.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Scaffolding individuality: coordination, cooperation, collaboration and community.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Major evolutionary transitions in individuality between humans and AI.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Human societal development: is it an evolutionary transition in individuality?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The 'major transitions in evolution' are mainly about the rise of hierarchy, new individuals arising at ever higher levels of nestedness, in particular the eukaryotic cell arising from prokaryotes, multicellular individuals from solitary protists and individuated societies from multicellular individuals. Some lists include human societies as a major transition, but based on a comparison with the non-human transitions, there are reasons for scepticism. (i) The foundation of the major transitions is hierarchy, but the cross-cutting interactions in human societies undermine hierarchical structure. (ii) Natural selection operates in three modes-stability, growth and reproductive success-and only the third produces the complex adaptations seen in fully individuated higher levels. But human societies probably evolve mainly in the stability and growth modes. (iii) Highly individuated entities are marked by division of labour and commitment to morphological differentiation, but in humans differentiation is mostly behavioural and mostly reversible. (iv) As higher-level individuals arise, selection drains complexity, drains parts, from lower-level individuals. But there is little evidence of a drain in humans. In sum, a comparison with the other transitions gives reasons to doubt that human social individuation has proceeded very far, or if it has, to doubt that it is a transition of the same sort. This article is part of the theme issue 'Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.