Article:
Agriculture as a major evolutionary transition to human ultrasociality, John Gowdy, Lisi Krall, Journal of Bioeconomics (2014) 16:179–202
TSElosopher discussants:
Albrecht Becker, Annika Hasselblad, Kari Lukka, Michiru Nagatsu, Ari Nieminen, Mia Salo, Marja Turunen, Milla Unkila
Article summary
What made us humans collectively, in a relatively short timespan, opt for an agricultural lifestyle instead of the hunting and gathering lifestyle? How did this end up making human collectives the ultrasocial superorganisms we currently inhabit? Was this transformation due to the unique intelligence of humans, or can a more compelling explanation be found when looking at evolutionary biology? This quandary, also known as the Neolithic Revolution, is the starting point for the present reading. The authors draw answers from the multilevel selection theory proposing that humanity shares an intriguing feature with ants and termites – at some point in our evolution, the evolution leaped from the individual level to the collective level. Drawing parallels of the specialized, hierarchical, militant and farming focused social organization between ants, termites, and humans, the authors suggest that the surplus producing tendencies in humans are less due to agentic choices than they are a result of evolutionary imperatives aimed at favoring the group instead of the individual.
Our discussion
Considering that in the age-old debate of nature vs nurture, most TSElosophers can be found either solidly spanning the divide in a Giddensian fashion or prone to digging trenches on the side of nurture, this paper seeking explanations from the side of nature could have been received more critically. Instead, we found it thought-provoking – especially as many of us are used to calling for more prosocial behavior. While TSElosophers were not happy with the limited explicit focus of the paper on the drastic ecological consequences of the human lifestyle in the described ultrasocial superorganisms, the striking inference from the paper’s analysis that our current environmental calamities may actually stem from our ultrasociality, not from our selfishness, provided a refreshing twist to our typical way of thinking. If our ability to collaborate is not the cure but the cause of the ailment, where do we go from here?
Naturally, the discussion did not flow without its discords. The paper is based on the widely shared premise that evolution cannot predict, nor contemplate. Given this, the authors could not quite convincingly explain how agriculture could become dominant, given that in the short term, the lifespan of people got shorter and the productivity per working hour decreased. It was also pointed out that the authors did not discuss the mechanisms of the social organization at any depth, making no qualitative distinctions of how organizing is achieved – instead of looking at why any group would become a community, they were content to note external (and maybe even superficial) similarities between the three species. It was also pointed out that a deeper definition of a species’ “success” was largely missing, replaced instead by the amount of biomass of the respective species. Also, the notion of domination is quite different between our insect friends and us humans: Where the insects, despite having been able to multiply admirably, have spread around the globe without wreaking total havoc on the ecosystems in which they live, our human domination looks, unfortunately, quite different.
One proposed explanation is the link missing in this article. In the case of ants and termites, the group-level evolution is purely driven by biology and thus proceeds at the pace of the biological evolution of the other species cohabiting a given ecosystem. Thus, the other species co-evolve, maintaining a balance between the ants/termites and the rest of the ecosystem. Also, a negative feedback mechanism seems to exist: As the population of a species gets bigger, more individuals behave in a ‘selfish’ manner, thereby reducing its population growth and giving room for other species to co-exist (Yamamichi et al. 2020).
In the case of humans, our evolution happened to equip us with a brain that not only enables us to collaborate on tangible things (“there’s a deer”, “let’s shelter here”, “how about making a baby”), but also to orient our collaboration towards abstract, and even imaginary things (“let’s build a temple to this god”, “let’s set up a start-up and become rich”). Due to our storytelling – and storybelieving – abilities, our evolution has, for the past 12 000 years, harnessed mass-scale coordination and cooperation through culture and technology, thus outpacing the purely biological evolution evidenced in other species. No potentially balancing species managed to keep up with us.
An interesting detail was mentioned: The elephants have better memory than humans, at least in the sense that the former ground their actions firmly in their physical reality. Our memory, in turn, is quite fallible. Could it be that exactly because we cannot remember reality, we are so reliant on our imagination, and as we rely on it more and more, we actually live not only in the environment (umwelt), but also within our experienced world (welt) and thus can ignore the effects our actions have on the physical reality as we pursue the imaginary ones?
Embedded in the article was the idea that the growth imperative somehow follows automatically from the shift in the evolutionary level from individual to group. Instead of orienting actions towards what suffices, the group efforts are aimed at producing surplus. While the article is not explicit regarding the link from seeking surplus to the growth imperative, we wondered whether this might be the intended ratio: As farming mandates sedentary life, which in turn makes it more difficult to wander far searching for additional sustenance, in the case of a bad harvest or other contrary conditions, access to a stocked larder becomes essential. We, however, were left wondering whether this simple explanation really suffices in explaining the immensity of the growth imperative – especially considering that humanity made a similar leap from better to worse individual lifestyles again at the start of the industrial revolution. Then the growth imperative was not oriented to better stocked larders but to a general drive for more of more of nearly everything.
To summarize, the best aspects of the article were the questions it made us think about, not necessarily their answers. This was also featured in the ending of the paper: Instead of the habitual uplifting final recommendations of how to go about solving stuff based on the stuff uncovered in the paper, the authors took, again, a counterintuitive turn. In discussing the future avenues, they simply state: “We might consider that evolution is not without its unsuccessful experiments.” Whether we’re determined to live out this unsuccessful experiment or whether we have not only the free will but also the inclination to revert the current trajectory, remains to be seen – and discussed probably also in future TSElosophers meetings…
Reference:
Yamamichi, M., Kyogoku, D., Iritani, R., Kobayashi, K., Takahashi, Y., Tsurui-Sato, K., Yamawo, A., Dobata, S., Tsuji, K., & Kondoh, M. (2020). Intraspecific Adaptation Load: A Mechanism for Species Coexistence. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 35(10), 897–907. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2020.05.011