EVOLUTION

Through
COMMUNICATION

How communication appears to be the axis of evolution from

microbes to modern attitudes
toward pandemics

ZAAL KIKVIDZE AND GIGI TEVZADZE

BOOKS OF THE SCHOOL OF CRITICAL THINKING

Zaal Kikvidze and Gigi Tevzadze
Evolution through Communication
Editor Maya Kiasashvili
Text © Zaal Kikvidze, Gigi Tevzadze, 2021
All rights reserved

ISBN 978-9941-8-3507-0 (PDF)

 Foreword to 2021 edition from Covid19 perspective

The present book has written in 2013, at the time when we could
only speculate on the consequences of a mono-disciplinary/one-
sided approach while facing a global ordeal. However, Covid-19
has confirmed what we said in 2013: the scarcity of a mono-
disciplinary, gene/molecular approach and the negative
consequences of underestimating social behaviour
(communication) in the evolution of living organisms can lead to
certain important negative outcomes.
We wrote then that discussing the evolution of living
organisms with only molecular and genetically random mutations
is not only incorrect but also poses a threat that we will not be
able to adequately predict the development of life forms.
According to our theory, the axis of evolution of living
organisms is communication (social behaviour) between them:
from the individuals involved in communication will multiply
those whose behaviour is successful and promising from the
‘point of view’ of this particular community. Adaptation to the
physical environment is secondary in this case: a population with
genetically enhanced traits searches for its own natural niche and
usually finds it.
In addition to explaining why organisms attain more complexity
through their evolution (the simplest organism adapts best to the
environment and its variation), such an approach allows us to see
the evolution process holistically in kingdoms of microbes as well
as those of plants and animals.

3
The behaviour that results in the survival and safe reproduction
of individuals and populations is reproduced and genetically
proven in offspring. Obviously, genetic mutations occur at the
molecular level, but these mutations are being ‘verified’ for safety
and productivity of a particular population.
However, what is the case with viruses that, according to even the
boldest theories, do not have mechanisms for non-genetic change
in behaviour?
The fact is that the ‘task’ of the virus population is not to
kill their host (including us). It would be impossible, because the
virus can only live in another living organism. For this to be the
case, we must assume that the living organism is directed towards
the destruction of its own living environment and, consequently,
of its own population. The population of viruses is selected to find
a variant that spreads as fast as possible so that its population is
neither harmed nor endangered. This, of course, does not happen
consciously: simply, every mutation that is dangerous to human
bodies dies with those particular human bodies, while the
mutation that travels safely from organism to organism
multiplies. Finally, the ‘ideal’ virus is a virus that is not detected
by the body's antibodies and T-cells and continues to exist in
living organisms not being detrimental to either its environment
or itself.
Today, the development of Covid-19 demonstrates this
process: each subsequent mutation is less fatal but more
prevalent. Such increased prevalence generates an illusion that
each subsequent strain is more deadly than the previous one.
However, it is not the case: As each subsequent strain of the virus

4
affects more people, including those who protected themselves
against the previous variant of the virus, it appears that the
number of illnesses and deaths caused by the virus is increasing.
However, the case-fatality ratio, the so-called fatality rate in fact
decreases with each subsequent variant. In addition, each
subsequent, faster spreading variant mostly kills those who were
already unconditional candidates for death. The latter is an
explanation for why mortality statistics does not change with a
wider spread of the virus.
Hence the benefits of vaccination: on the one hand, the
vaccine ‘helps’ a person to cope with the virus, and on the other
hand, ‘helps’ the virus, which is able to spread as an unnoticed
mutation and survive. Vaccination is not a fight against a virus,
but, by cooperating and communicating with it, aiding its
evolution.
However, the described view is not appreciated, and the
epidemiological battle with Covid-19 was waged around the
world based on a mono-disciplinary approach, feeding the beliefs
that the virus is destroying humanity according to its biological
calling and that each subsequent mutation was insidiously trying
to kill more people than the previous one.
This is exactly the danger we only assumed in 2013: Can a one-
sided evolutionary theory be really harmful? Now the harm
becomes clear and includes a near collapse of many businesses in
the world economy.
We hope that with this foreword, the 2013 text will be more
intriguing and exciting for the readers.

5
Preface

This book is a result of decade-long discussions which the authors

started from a question: ‘Can we unify various and rather isolated
branches of life sciences into one integral body of knowledge?’
Even though contemporary anthropology is widely viewed as one
discipline, it is deeply divided into physical (studies on human
body) and cultural (studies on human societies) sub-disciplines,
and the concepts and data do not circulate easily between the two.
Our discussions were about the ideas that can bridge the
segmented bodies of knowledge about life and facilitate their
unification. One idea that can unify the diverse manifestations of
life is analysing the history of life on the planet Earth as a
continuous line from primitive bacteria to modern humans and
their societies.
We attempted to merge our major fields of expertise
(biology and ecology – ZK, social sciences and philosophy – GT).
This required unusual application of our research methods to new
targets. For example, we considered the works of Charles Darwin
to be not only the analysis of empirical data which led the author
to the idea of evolution, but a text of major social and human
importance. In this way we sought the still overlooked strata and
examined the author’s ideas from unusual angles to disclose them
more fully. We also tried the methods of engineering sciences for
analysing the definition of life – a major unsolved problem in
natural sciences. No less exciting was the use of the tools worked
out in natural sciences to look at the traditional problems of
sociology such as social progress.

6
 We worked in a tight collaboration with each other as
required by the spirit of inter- or trans-disciplinary studies.
However, ZK was the lead author of this preface, Chapters 1, 2,
4, 5, 7, 10 and 11, whilst GT composed the major parts of
Chapters 3, 6, 8, 9 and the epilogue.
Each chapter is preceded with its abstract to ease reading by
the latter-day very busy readers. These abstracts allow for
jumping over parts of the book if the reader is familiar with the
argumentation or accepts the conclusions without delving into the
main text more deeply.
We are grateful to so many of our colleagues whose
professional communication, advice and even joint work made
this book possible. A special thanks to Maia Kiasashvili for her
editing and proofreading our text.

Zaal Kikvidze and Gigi Tevzadze

7
 Contents

1. Peculiar but one of the most successful theories in natural

sciences ........................................... 9

2. Scientific method cannot define life but IT can ......... 20

3. Social behaviour always acts on purpose .............. 32

4. What’s up? Social behaviour in non-human beings ...... 40

5. Animal-like versus plant-like ....................... 48

6. In the selection through behaviour, sexual equals social .. 58

7. Natural and artificial IT: overtaking (selfish) genes ...... 79

8. Evolution of social behaviour in humans: from speech to

women’s rights .................................... 93

9. Evolutionary foundations of the trouble with atheism ... 103

Epilogue: against the hard mental illusions ............. 110

Literature cited ................................... 114

8
1. Peculiar but one of the most successful theories in natural
sciences

The first chapter is introductory and overviews briefly the

theory of evolution, one of the greatest achievements of
natural sciences. The current version of this theory is
primarily based on the first principles of physics and
chemistry, which has greatly increased the power of the
theory. Indeed, physics and chemistry now pervade
biology; nonetheless, physical and chemical approach
cannot give satisfactory answers to certain principal
questions. The most conspicuous problem still awaiting its
solution is the definition of life, although there are other
problems too, e.g., the origins of life and major
evolutionary transitions (emergence of complex living
beings from simpler predecessors), linking biodiversity to
ecosystem functions, biological taxonomy, evolutionary
progress.... Should we continue waiting for the solutions
from physics and chemistry, or perhaps the solution can
be found on the basis of an inter- or even trans-
disciplinary approach?

The literature on the theory of evolution is particularly vast and

cannot be reviewed in one short introductory chapter. Therefore,
here we will only highlight the main features of the theory with
its strong and weak points. To be precise, we will deal with the
evolutionary theory of Darwin (1859), but skip any of the
preceding theories such as the theory of Lamarck. However, we

9
feel that the contribution of Alfred Russel Wallace, who worked
out essentially the same evolutionary ideas independently from
Darwin, also deserves mentioning. As we know, Wallace
generously and humbly gave the priority of authorship to Darwin
after reading his unpublished manuscript. Darwin’s well-
evidenced and rigorous analysis strongly impressed Wallace, and
he limited himself by co-authorship of a letter about natural
selection (Darwin and Wallace 1858), which was published just
one year before the release of Darwin’s book. It is very
remarkable, however, that two researchers arrived at the same
idea independently from each other. As it is well known, Darwin
completed a voyage around the world on the board of HMS
Beagle and collected very rich biological and paleontological
materials, which he later used to illustrate and prove his theory
(Darwin 1891). Wallace led extensive fieldwork in tropical
countries where he collected plant and animal specimens for the
British Museum and private collectors including Darwin. He
started his work in the Amazon River basin but soon moved to
the Malay Archipelago, where he made his most important
generalisations (Wallace 1969). Both the Amazon Basin and the
Malay Archipelago are mega-diversity regions. The analysis of
this immense biological variability across continents and islands
together with their geological history led Wallace to the same
ideas as Darwin. Such a coincidence in science is considered
usually a strong side of a given theory. Isaac Newton and
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz also developed calculus – the
foundation of classical physics – independently from each other
(Brown 2012; Kuhn 2012).

10
 First of all, the theory of evolution is remarkably successful.
Today the essence of this theory is well established: the new
forms (species) evolve from other forms through a certain
process. This process is a natural selection by which organisms
better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce
more offspring. This is underpinned by heredity: the ability of
offspring to inherit characteristic traits of their parents and pass
them to next generations. The successful organisms multiply
more and the traits that help reproduction become shared by more
and more organisms through the next generations; over time these
traits become dominant to characterise a new species. Darwin and
Wallace (1858) were first to describe this mechanism of evolution
and since then the theory did not undergo a major change. In the
meantime, new research and emergence of new disciplines such
as genetics and cell biology revealed a multitude of new
important empirical facts that enriched our knowledge on
biological evolution. For example, now we are aware of the basic
physiological mechanisms that help fit organisms to their
environment, where the hereditary information is kept, how it is
transferred from one generation of offspring to another and how
this biological information is translated into biochemical
reactions and anatomical structures of cells and organisms. Such
new biological findings add not only precision to the theory of
evolution, but also confirm the original hypotheses of Darwin and
Wallace. The rigor and viability of the theory are demonstrated
not only in laboratories and by theoretical analysis, but the theory
finds very important applications in modern agriculture and
medicine including cancer research and medication (Huxley

11
1943; Casás-Selves and DeGregori 2011); these productive
applications are perhaps the strongest proves among all available
empirical evidence.
The second feature of the theory of evolution is its
complexity in the sense that it is based on more than one principle,
which becomes evident when the theory of evolution is compared
with the major theories of physics and chemistry. The latter are
deterministic and based on a few equations or rules that allow for
mathematically precise extrapolations testable with empirical
experiments. Unlike them, the theory of evolution is statistical,
which means that extrapolations can only be done for very large
numbers of observations or for a very large interval of time. At
the same time, these extrapolations are not as precise. Further,
physical and chemical theories are practically exclusive: their
generalisations never or very rarely allow for exceptions from the
principal rule; by contrast, the theory of evolution is inclusive in
the sense that it allows different principles for different cases. For
example, origins of new species are well explained by a
mechanism that is based on competition: the better the organisms
fit their environment the more they survive. However, the major
evolutionary transitions such as origins of complex (eukaryote)
cells from simpler (prokaryote) cells, or development of socially
organised populations are poorly explained by competition
(Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry 1995) and require inclusion of
positive interactions such as symbiosis, facilitation, mutualism
and altruism (Margulis 2008; Kikvidze and Callaway 2009).
Likewise, along with the major mechanism in transferring genes
from generation to generation (vertical transfer through sexual

12
reproduction), we see other mechanisms operating (horizontal
transfer of genes through conjugation, viral infections, etc. (see
e.g. Morjan and Rieseberg 2004).
The complex nature of the theory of evolution allows its
various versions to coexist and prompts disputes and debates
among biologists as to which version is more precise in the
description of selection mechanism, or whether genes or
organisms are the units of selection, and so on. The plurality of
versions can be considered the third feature of the theory of
evolution. One of the most prominent authors and the proponent
of the modern gene-centred views is Richard Dawkins who
published a well-known book The Selfish Gene (2006). Dawkins
defines genes not just the ones found in an organism, but all
identical genes that spread across all individual organisms in a
population of a given species. By these views, natural selection
engages in competition not the organisms but the genes, the
former being just vehicles for the latter in the struggle for
existence; in other words, the natural selection will increase the
frequency of those genes whose phenotypic effects ensure their
successful replication. This concept does not get along well with
traditional versions historically shared by biologists, which
consider organisms the main units of selection. The most
prominent author criticizing the selfish gene is the late Stephen
Jay Gould who qualified the gene-centred views as ‘ultra’- and
‘fundamentalist Darwinism’ (Gould 1997). Yet, the disapprovals
from Gould and other critics are of rather philosophical character
and cannot reject specific scientific advantages of the gene-

13
centred model, which are evident in its ability to explain or
conform to various peculiar phenomena.
One such peculiar phenomenon is the so-called intra-
genomic conflict. Normally, a selfish gene struggles for existence
by developing a trait in an organism, which will pass the gene to
descendants. Intra-genomic conflict emerges if a gene starts to
behave parasitically and, instead of taking part in the
development of organism, just self-multiplies to take more share
in germ (reproductive) cells and ensure its propagation to the
detriment of all other genes of a given organism (e.g.,
Bonduriansky and Chenoweth 2009). Remarkably, there is a
special mechanism operating in reproductive cells that checks
such ‘ultra-selfish’ genes and reduces the cases of intra-genomic
conflict to unimportant frequency (Keller 1999).
An important class of phenomena to which the concept of
selfish gene fits well, counterintuitive as it may sound, is
biological altruisms (see Okasha 2013 for a recent review of
biological altruism). The textbook example is worker bees that do
not reproduce (being sterile females) and sacrifice themselves to
protect their hives. Darwin’s theory predicts that natural selection
selects for increased reproduction and thus these altruistic bees
should not exist because they do not reproduce. This phenomenon
deeply troubled Darwin who referred to it as:

‘one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me to be

insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory’
(Darwin 1859, p. 236; as cited in Dugatkin 2007).

14
However, Darwin found the way out by hypothesising that natural
selection might favour altruism at the level of blood kin and the
problem

‘disappears when it is remembered that selection may be

applied to the family, as well as the individual and may
thus gain the desired end’ (Darwin 1859, p. 204; as cited
in Dugatkin 2007).

Indeed, the modern selfish gene model allows for altruistic

behaviour and self-sacrificing of individual organisms even
though the genes remain selfish. This is possible because self-
sacrificing happens for the sake of kin – practically, to help
survive the same genes, although in other individuals. This
mechanism has been formalised and usually is referred to as kin
selection (Hamilton 1964; Maynard Smith 1964). Kin selection
was documented in various classes of living beings: in unicellular
organisms such as amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum (Gilbert et
al. 2007; 2009) and in the so-called eusocial insects such as bees,
termites, wasps, ants. (Wilson 1971; Wilson and Hölldobler
2005). In one extreme example self-sacrificing becomes a daily
routine as a pre-emptive nest defence in the Brazilian ant Forelius
pusillus. Every day, the nest entrance is closed at sunset. One to
eight workers complete the task from the outside and, in doing so,
sacrifice their lives (Tofilski et al. 2008). Kin selection has been
documented also in mammals – e.g., in Belding's ground squirrels
Spermophilus beldingi (Sherman 1977; 1985) and in the sun-
tailed monkeys Cercopithecus solatus (Charpentier 2008). It

15
should be noted that there were attempts to replace the
mechanism of kin selection with the so-called group (multilevel)
selection (Nowak et al. 2010; Wilson and Wilson 2007); the latter
proposes that natural selection acts at the level of the group,
instead of at the level of an individual or gene. This move was
robustly criticised (see, e.g., Foster et al. 2006); however, the
mathematical models behind these two mechanisms appeared to
be very similar (Birch and Okasha 2015). Perhaps, the question
as to which level of biological organisation the unit of selection
(see the above) belongs is quite irrelevant to the outcome of
evolution and lacks theoretical importance.
Another class of altruisms with which the selfish gene
concept could get along is the so-called reciprocal altruism
(Okasha 2013; Trivers 1971). Reciprocal altruism cannot be
explained by sacrificing for the sake of blood kin because the
individuals engaged in this interaction are not necessarily
relatives but rather members of the same colony or population or
even represent different species. In reciprocally altruistic
behaviour, an organism helps another and, by this, the fitness of
the helping party (benefactor) temporarily reduces while
increasing the fitness of receiving party (beneficiary); at the same
time, it is expected that these roles will be reversed at a later time
(Trivers 1971). Theoretically, the concept of reciprocal altruism
is well elaborated, yet its empirical base is scant, if any (Okasha
2013). In fact, animals often aid others without gaining any
immediate benefit, but they are only apparently altruistic (Stevens
and Hauser 2004). As it appears, benefactors typically help
because they or their kin receive future benefits or avoid costly

16
punishment. Therefore, the elegantly established theoretical
potential does not develop into reality. This might be because the
pre-conditions for the reciprocal altruism to evolve are too
demanding (Okasha 2013); these pre-conditions necessarily
include multiple encounters (life in a group or colony) and also
the ability of individual recognition, which requires well-
developed cognitive faculties (Stevens and Hauser 2004). This
does not mean that there were no documented forms of
cooperation among non-kin organisms, but rather such positive
interactions, even though mutually beneficial, do not qualify for
reciprocal altruism. It does mean, however, that the concept of
selfish genes cannot be easily married with the documented
mutualistic relationships. This is because the pre-conditions for
the reciprocal altruism to evolve were actually designed to
reconcile the selfish gene with the cooperative behaviour in
humans (e.g., Dawkins 2006; evolutionary game strategies),
therefore inexistent reciprocal altruism in organisms other than
humans leaves little place for attaching the concept of selfish gene
to mutualistic ecological interactions. As it is not a single case
when the modern theory of biology encounters difficulties, the
problem might not be the selfishness of genes as such, but rather
our attempts to reduce the natural selection to the selection of
genes: we will discuss these cases of unsolved problems below.
If we overview the development of the theory of evolution
from Darwin to Dawkins, we will see that the transformation of
the theory from its original version (Darwin) to the concept of the
selfish gene (Dawkins) occurred in line with the general trends in
science. In times of Darwin, scientific disciplines were rather

17
isolated and the use of physical and chemical methods in biology
was not common. Afterwards, physics and chemistry went a long
way to achieve unifying generalisations of the accumulated
knowledge on natural phenomena; these became reducible to a
few first principles – the universal laws of motion (Carroll 2007).
Physical and chemical biology gradually took a dominant
position and firmly established the scientific method, the major
purpose of which is reducing all known natural processes to these
first principles in life sciences. The achievements of scientific
method in biology are well known: among them are the major
discoveries such as chromosomes, DNA, double helix, genetic
laws, ultrastructure of cells and the functions of organelles,
revealing full metabolic networks of cells including advances in
the studies on the secondary metabolism in plants and on neural
chemistry of animals. The reduction of evolutionary theory to the
concept of the selfish gene is a part of these developments.
Against the background of the triumphs achieved by the
scientific method in biology, the failures of gene-centred theory
of evolution in explaining certain important problems become
more evident. For example, the selfish gene is uncomfortable for
explaining endosymbiosis – the way simple different prokaryote
cells produce complex eukaryote cells. Accounting for why a
symbiosis or other mutually beneficial interactions establish
between different organisms is especially difficult (Maynard
Smith and Szathmáry 1999; Kikvidze and Callaway 2009).
Explaining the subsequent evolution of symbiotic unions is not
easy either because these interactions engage phylogenetically
very distant partners, so that the facilitative effects of one

18
organism on another can no longer be accounted for by the
selfishness of genes that use kin organisms for survival (see the
above). We have also mentioned mutualistic interactions as
problematic ones for the selfish gene. In fact, mutualisms are not
only ubiquitous, but also rarely break down in nature and a
phylogenetic study has found that parasites as well as autonomous
taxa are nested within mutualistic clades (Sachs and Simms
2006). This indicates high importance of mutualistic relationships
to the origins of species, a fact not easy to fit to the concept of the
selfish gene. Furthermore, ecological literature describes many
other types of (unilaterally) beneficial interactions such as
commensalism, facilitation and parasitism, where the host can get
certain benefits from its specialised parasite (Rodriguez and
Redman 2008; Kogel et al. 2006); these interactions operate along
with competition, mutualism and symbiosis, and are similarly
wide-spread. The inability of the selfish gene concept to predict
or explain such interactions weakens the positions of gene-
centred views. Interestingly, despite the criticisms from
philosophers that extreme reductionism and attempts to base all
sciences on the first physical principles hinder interdisciplinarity,
hamper the development of more general and powerful theories,
and lessen the applied potential of the disciplines (e.g., see
Kaitaro 1997). To our knowledge no specific major shortcomings
of such first-principle-oriented reductionist approach have been
named so far. We believe that such shortcomings do exist and are
still overlooked, and precisely these shortcomings are responsible
for the unsolved problems of the current biological theory. We
will explore this hypothesis in the next chapter.

19
 2. Scientific method cannot define life but IT can

One of the major unsolved problems of modern natural

sciences is the definition of life. The scientific method tries
to reduce any natural processes including life to the basic
interactions governed by the universal laws of energy and
matter (the first principles). However, this is not sufficient
to define what life is. If we look at the modern concepts
that describe the processes of life, we will see that the
scientific method ignores the meaning of biological
information (what actually is encoded in genes and neural
circuits). Nevertheless, it is this meaning of biological
information that governs the development of an organism
and its interactions with the environment. Therefore, we
can use the control theory and define life as information
governing mass and energy. The definition can be named
as ‘engineering’ (because the control theory is employed)
or a ‘semantic’ definition of life (because it highlights the
importance of meaning).

One of the major problems that the scientific method has failed to
solve so far is the definition of life (Carroll 2007). The failure
becomes especially conspicuous against the background of
advances in science (Chapter 1). Paradoxically, modern physics
is able to describe (in terms of mass and energy transformations)
any separately taken phenomenon associated with life – any
biochemical reaction in cells and any physiological process in a
body such as respiration, digestion, muscle contractions; yet the

20
life itself, the principal target, remains without definition and the
scientific method cannot address this challenge satisfactorily.
Very important epistemologically or ontologically per se, the
question is also crucial for solving other problems of science.
First of all, without a definition of life it is impossible to solve the
problem of origins of life. Based on what criteria a given
collection of chemical reactions can be recognised as life (Cleland
and Chyba 2002)? It is impossible to experimentally distinguish
life from non-life (Tessera 2016). Indeed,

‘Let us remind ourselves that the laws of physics and

chemistry are much like the rules of grammar. They must
be obeyed, but there is not enough information in the rules
of grammar to produce Lincoln's Gettysburg Address’
(Yockey 2005, p.187).

Physicists and chemists never ceased their quest for a definition

of life that would be acceptably clear and simple, yet without
success so far. In 1944, a famous Austrian physicist Erwin
Schrödinger published a small book What Is Life? Remarkably,
the works of Schrödinger, a scientist of the top calibre, were
fundamental in unifying physics and chemistry. The equation that
carries his name (the Schrödinger equation) can actually describe
a chemical molecule of any complexity showing the locations of
nuclei and electrons calculated from the potentials and spin-
orbital interactions on the basis of Coulomb’s law. The equation
has only three free parameters: the fine-structure constant that
characterises electromagnetic interactions, the neutron/proton

21
mass ratio (which is close to 1) and the proton/electron mass ratio
(≈1840). It is amazing that a model with so little free parameters
can analyse incomprehensibly diverse chemical structures.
Indeed, the Schrödinger equation can describe any stable
molecule of compounds found in the metabolism of living
organisms, and this is an immeasurably rich diversity (Carroll
2007). After such a dazzling success it was natural to expect that
physics would explain and define life similarly effectively. Yet,
as already mentioned, these expectations appeared to be futile. In
truth, even though Schrödinger himself admitted that his
contemporary knowledge of physics and chemistry was not
sufficient for such a definition, today Schrödinger is still
considered to be the one who came closest to the physical
definition of life. Schrödinger suggested that the future research
would reveal new physical laws that would help define life in
physical terms. So far, this did not happen and the analysis of life
given by Schrödinger has not changed noticeably.
Today, the situation is as follows: there is a formidable
number of attempts to define life in physical terms, which
practically involve all possible aspects of life (Trifonov 2011).
Yet, the suggested definitions are either too general, or are
burdened with ‘non-scientific’ (historical, traditional, religious)
concepts (Luisi 2006). Some scientists suggest that life definition
is not a scientific question even though it is successfully used in
medical and biological research (Gayon 2010). Moreover,
because the difference between the living and non-living objects
is not experimentally testable, a physical definition of life is

22
impossible, so it is better to divert our resources to solving other
scientific problems (Tessera 2012).
In contrast with the above, biologists do not require
distinguishing living beings from the non-living matter based on
physical laws. An extended but exact description of life serves
best instead of short and first-principle-based definitions. In
biology the smallest unit of life is a cell, which is characterised
by the following features (e.g., Koshland Jr. 2002):
1. Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to
maintain a constant state;
2. Organisation: a body consisting of structure;
3. Metabolism: the ability of decomposing and synthesizing
chemical substances, which enables living beings to
acquire and use resources from their environment for
growing and reproducing through multi-stage
physiological processes and biochemical reactions;
4. Growth: more chemicals are synthesised than
decomposed. The increment in mass is structured to
support and perform physiological functions;
5. Adaptation: the ability to change the body structure,
physiological functions and behaviour over time in
response to environmental changes;
6. Response to stimuli, which most often is expressed by
motion; for example, an insect runs away from a predator,
or a plant grows towards more light, bacteria transform
into spores under harsh physical conditions (e.g., lack of
water);

23
 7. Heredity: reproduction of new individual organisms
similar to its parents.
The simplest living beings with all the above features are
bacteria. Bacteria are intensively studied and there is a vast
knowledge accumulated about them already. This body of
knowledge shows unequivocally that all life processes in bacteria
are ultimately governed by the bacterial genome – a circular
chromosome that contains up to ten thousand genes.
All the above seven features are either the subjects or the
objects of a hierarchy of control and regulation on the top of
which reside the genes. The genes guide the development of a cell
from the spore; the genes define the geometric shape, the intensity
and frequency of biochemical reactions inside the bacterial cells,
its division and multiplication; the genes control interactions with
other bacteria – exchange of plasmids (short fragments of DNA
that carry certain genes) via the process of conjugation (horizontal
gene transfer). In other words, genetic information is a key
concept in evolutionary biology. Such information is stored in
biological organisms’ genomes, and used to generate new
organisms as well as to maintain and control it. Genetic
information is also ‘that which evolves’: when a population
adapts to a local environment, information about this
environment is fixed in a representative genome. Further, and this
is no less important, the genes try to manage the environment
using their bacterial cells: we just mentioned interactions with
other bacteria, which are part of the environment of a given
bacterium. Another example of managing the environment is pre-
digestion with exoenzymes. In their environment, the bacteria

24
often find food particles consisting of organic macromolecules
that are too big to be taken up and digested easily. The
exoenzymes decompose these particles into smaller constituents
that are easier for bacteria to uptake and digest (Chróst et al.
1989). Furthermore, bacteria release antibiotics into their
environment for defensive purposes, thus making their habitat
safer (Hopwood 2007). How bacterial genes manage to control
all these processes? Clearly, it is the information encoded in the
genes that govern. This information is translated into the
‘language’ of proteins, and then the proteins directly fulfill the
necessary functions, which are seen in the building structures and
biochemical catalyses. Importantly, this is the feature of
information that the scientific method ignores (below), whilst for
biologists it is axiomatic that the genes govern life processes not
only in bacteria but also in higher organisms.
The scientific method as applied to information is strikingly
different from that of the theory of control (understood here sensu
lato and synonymous to cybernetics, systems theory, information
theory). Schrödinger (1944) characterised life as an open system
that exchanges energy and mass with its environment. By
obtaining energy from environmental resources such a system
maintains its own entropy at a low level. In physics, entropy is a
measure of order in a system and more ordered systems (more
distant from the thermodynamic equilibrium) have less entropy.
Entropy is also used for quantifying information: the more
information, the less entropy. The difference between the
scientific approach and that of the control theory is precisely in
how the information is handled. For a physicist, information is

25
something that can be quantified by entropy, whilst the theory of
control primarily looks at the sequence of signals and analyses
the meaning encoded in a given piece of information. Genes carry
exactly this latter type of information without any direct
connection to entropy – this is self-evident. Therefore, we join the
scientists who consider life definition beyond the scope of physics
and chemistry (Gayon 2010; Tessera 2012). In contrast with this,
one of the main targets of the theory of control is regulatory
systems operating in living cells and organisms. The theory of
control does not belong to the realm of science but represents
engineering (e.g., Khare and Swarup 2009). Therefore, we will
not limit the definition of life to the first principles only, but
include engineering concepts into the analysis (a trans-
disciplinary approach).
The theory of control and information technologies in
general rely on a certain assumption that is so natural that, to our
knowledge, has never been stated explicitly or analysed formally.
It is obvious that any message has meaning, and often the
meaning is what the word ‘information’ specifically implies. It is
easy to assume that the larger the message, the more contents or
‘information’ it carries. Such an assumption, even though
implicit, helps quantify information in binary digits (bits) as
Claude Shannon showed (1948; 1951). This hidden assumption
appears to be a very reasonable one as evidenced by the
astonishing advances in information theory and technologies. At
the same time, this implicit assumption accentuates the
quantitative aspect of information (the size of a message), whilst
the importance of the contents remains ‘assumed’. As it appears,

26
the assumption does not always hold and, in particular, hinders
the application of the theory of information to the genes. Indeed,
the implicit assumption that ‘larger messages carry more
contents’ predicts that the larger the genome (the larger the total
length of genetic DNA), the more complex its organism must be
(in terms of structure, physiology and behaviour), yet this is not
so (e.g. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995). We can sort out
this problem with the help of two well-known facts the
importance of which, however, have not yet been fully realised.
The first fact is that the length of a message does not
necessarily correlate with its contents. Obviously, a lengthy and
detailed description requires a correspondingly large text, yet it is
possible to compose a text of the same length but with little or no
meaning in it. For example, a random reshuffling of words in a
message can result in an entire loss of its meaning even though
the length is the same. Therefore, the theory of communication
considers probabilities of errors in a message, and, if the message
is very important, it is duplicated or triplicated, thus adding
redundancy for the purpose of error detection. Consider a
telegraphist who by mistake omits ‘No’ in a short text intended to
prevent declaration of war. The message would radically change
its meaning! Sending redundant messages helps detect such errors
and ultimately the meaning can be reproduced intact. Likewise, it
matters what is the meaning encoded in the genes, but not their
actual length. Indeed, polyploidy can produce a very large
genome by copying one set of genes many times, yet in terms of
the meaning there will be little more than in the original set.

27
 The second fact is that the meaning or the contents of a text
does not depend on the medium of communication: it can be
transmitted by a chain of electric signals, or given by an audio-
record or visual video-clip, or written on a paper, or brought by a
messenger verbally. The meaning will not change. This is
important for evolution as much as the media other than genes
also can transfer biological information, and so genes cannot hold
their monopoly on transferring heredity. For example, complex
behaviour in high organisms can be learnt from the parents and
peers but not genetically inherited (Baldwin 1896). Indeed, neural
capabilities can be as or even more important than genes; this fact
allows for comparing biological evolution with the development
of human societies, where the transfer of information from
generation to generation takes a very different medium – these
problems we will discuss in following chapters.
Overall, the above analysis leads us to propose a trans-
disciplinary definition of life, which in its shortest form can be
synthesised as follows:

Life is the information governing energy and matter.

In this definition, ‘information’ refers to the meaning

encoded in genes, whilst all the physiological processes and
biochemical reactions that are so successfully described by the
physical and chemical methods, in reality represent energy and
matter transformations embedded in the system of genetic
control.

28
 The above definition can be called ‘engineering’ (because
the control theory is used) or ‘semantic’ (because it highlights the
importance of information contents but not its size or the medium
of communication). At the same time, the value of this definition
lies in its trans-disciplinarity. Indeed, it does not bring much
novelty to physics and chemistry because it is primarily about
governing, whilst physical and chemical processes are of
secondary importance. The definition bears little novelty for
information theory and cybernetics too because these fields of
study in fact originate from biology (Bertalanffy von 1976) and
focus especially on regulation in living systems. The value of the
above definition, however, is in its capability to bridge different
disciplines and compare very diverse forms of life, however
simple or complex. In fact, governing is impossible in simple
physical and chemical systems because governing implies a
certain initial, a minimum level of complexity: the system to be
controlled will possess at least a piece responsible for detecting
signals from the environment (receptor or sensor), which will
feed the detected signal to the analysing piece. The latter makes
a decision according to which the entire system will react.
Development of such systems, naturally or artificially, is beyond
the scope of physics and chemistry even though the theory of
control widely uses the achievements of these disciplines.
Most importantly, the new definition redirects the attention
from the selfishness of genes to the governing (i.e., behaviour),
even though we agree with the idea of R. Dawkins (2006) that
organisms are mere vehicles used by genes to read the
environment and execute corresponding reactions. As to how

29
complex the system of gene control in the organism is, can be
judged by the behaviour of specific living beings. It is easy to see
that both the structure and behaviour of organisms become more
complex along the evolution. More complex organisms attempt
not only to fit the environment well, but also to change it for their
benefit, although this aspect of behaviour is little studied (Huxley
1936). The increasing sophistication of biological control systems
is evident when looking at the organisms ranked along their
structural complexity. Bacteria are simplest in their structure, yet
they already try to ameliorate their habitat by means of
exoenzymes and antibiotics (see the above); in other relations
their behaviour is passive and bacteria have little means even to
move independently. The protista are better equipped for
movement and they move more actively in search of food
resources and protective shelters. Plants can acquire information
about the landscape and adjust seed dispersal to it (Chaine et al.
2013); social behaviour in plants can be seen through their
strategies of seed dispersal and analysed using seed mass (Török
et al. 2013); plants also can construct niches which are more
fertile for a given species as well as for other satellite species that
benefit from the ameliorated habitat (Odling-Smee et al. 2003);
plants can also communicate with each other through airborne
signals (Heil and Karban, 2010) or root contacts and exudates
(Karban et al. 2013; Bais et al. 2004). The behaviour of animals
takes new and more complex forms, which can strongly influence
their evolution (Baldwin 1896). For example, altruistic behaviour
can be transmitted from parent to children culturally, through
learning and education (Jellal and Wolff 2002). In fact, social

30
behaviour can be the most important driver of the origins of Homo
sapiens (Smuts et al. 1987; Tevzadze 2013). Social behaviour is
discussed in the next chapter.

31
 3. Social behaviour always acts on purpose

The interest of social scientists towards the role of

information grew dramatically in the 20th century. In
truth, this interest did not lead to a description of a new
mode of society but rather to recognizing the crucial
importance of information to social systems. Considering
the existing definitions of social behaviour, we see two
principal elements of social behaviour or social action:
(1) transferring (exchange of) information and (2) the
intention of an agent to change his or her environment in
his or her favour (here environment is used in its broadest
sense that includes other agents too). The concept can be
synthesised as follows: social behaviour is governing the
environment by means of information.

The concept of Information Society emerged in the 20th century

(Machlup 1962; Crawford 1983), and became pervasive in
sociological thinking after the cult works of Manuel Castells
(1996; 1997; 1998). Today an information society is understood
as a society where the creation, distribution, usage, integration
and manipulation of information are the most important
economic, political, and cultural activity. An information society
also carries clear signs of post-modernity (sensu Lyotard 1979):
meta-narratives (master ideas about the legitimacy of a given
society) are disappearing; developing media (the means of
information exchange and communication) transform our views
on the global hierarchy. The views on the information society

32
accepted today present it as a consequence of global social and
economic changes. Modern nations started to emerge in the 18th
century to mark the onset of the industrial era in our history when
manufacturing became the most important area of human
enterprise. However, the area of services grew faster and became
more important than manufacturing by the mid 20th century; this
very transformation produced post-industrial societies. Modern
post-industrial or information societies are characterised by the
overwhelming importance of services and are based on ‘the
knowledge economy’ (Bell 1973; Drucker 1993). However,
sociologists also remind us that the transformations mentioned
above do not affect the existed society and no essential change
touched private ownership of the means of production or their
operation for profit (Webster 2006). Competition intensity might
decrease (Castells 1996-1998) and job offers increase, yet this
does not mean a radically new type of society – modern society
rather becomes networked globally (Fuchs 2008).
Although it was not earlier than the late 20th century that
sociologists started to pay attention to information technologies
as to the phenomena that pervade social systems, early
sociologists already recognised the importance of information to
social interactions. Max Weber in his Economy and Society
emphasised the importance of meaning in an action of an
individual (1978a, p.4):

‘We shall speak of action insofar as the acting individual

attaches a subjective meaning to his behaviour – be overt
or covert, omission or arquiesense. Action is ‘social’

33
 insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the
behaviour of other and is thereby oriented in its course’.

Thus, Max Weber viewed sociology as the science whose

objective is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby
give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds
and the effects which it produces. In this definition of ‘action’ the
human behaviour is meant – when and to the extent that the agent
or agents see it as subjectively meaningful. Social action of a
person can include failures to act as well as passive conformity,
and be oriented to the present or past or the expected future
behaviour of other persons. Therefore, social action can be
motivated by revenge or intended as defence against present or
future aggressions. The acting person can know other persons to
whom his or her action is addressed; yet the action also can be
addressed to indefinite plurality of entirely unknown individuals.
For example, a person can accept money in payment with an
expectation that a large but unknown group of individuals he is
not personally acquainted with will be ready to accept it in
exchange on some future occasion (Weber 1978a, p.22).
Another founder of classic sociology, Emile Durkheim
established a concept of social facts, which, in his opinion, frame
social actions:

‘Considering in turn each member of society, the

foregoing remarks can be repeated for each single one of
them. Thus there are ways of acting, thinking and feeling
which possess the remarkable property of existing outside

34
 the consciousness of the individual’ (Durkheim 1982,
p.51).

Social facts are systems of opinions, philosophies, values, norms,

rules and ideas which exist independently from us in the society
and determine social actions positively as well as negatively:
often humans confront social facts and act against them:

‘A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not,

capable of exerting over the individual an external
constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given
society whilst having an existence of its own, independent
of its individual manifestations’ (p.59).

Another important figure contributing to the theory of

social action is Talcott Parsons. Parsons (1968) viewed human
action as shaped by three major factors: personal system of ends,
purpose and ideals, cultural code, and social system. Each of the
three components is built on specific signs and symbols, which
carry specific meaning for any specific person. The subjective
meaning of the action performed by an agent is expressed
according to these symbols. In this sense any action is unique –
no action is identical to any other however similar they might be.
Social action can also be described as communication as
long as it concerns exchange of information (meaning). The
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1982) viewed a social
system as a communication system. Within the system,
communication is based on the limited amount of information

35
which is selected according to its meaning (contents). Actually,
for Luhmann a social system works as a process of meanings
(pp.131-138).
The most synthetic definition, we believe, is given by
Rudolph Rummel (1976), in which social actions work as
constituents of social behaviour:

‘Behaviour that is peculiarly social is oriented towards

other selves. Such behaviour apprehends another as a
perceiving, thinking, Moral, intentional, and behaving
person; considers the intentional or rational meaning of
the other's field of expression; involves expectations
about the other's acts and actions; and manifests an
intention to invoke in another self-certain experiences and
intentions. What differentiates social from non-social
behaviour, then, is whether another self is taken into
account in one’s acts, actions, or practices’ (Chapter 9).

Without exception, the above definitions of social

behaviour give key importance to information: it contains the
meaning that must be communicated and read appropriately.
Such information is clearly subjective, not only because it is
driven by the subjective motivation of an acting agent, but also
because of the receiving agent’s subjective perceptions.
The above permits us to conclude that the concept of
information society, together with all the discussions around it,
formalises our appreciation at the discursive level that a society
and social behaviour essentially and inevitably function on the

36
basis of exchange of meanings in the form of information, even
though this is not a new mode of our existence.
Finally, it is clear that social behaviour is governed by
information: actually social behaviour is intended to
communicate information to other self or selves who are receptive
to this information. Such communication can be direct or indirect.
For example, painting a picture by an artist, or composing a text
by a writer is indirect communication, whilst a dialogue or a
theatrical performance of an actor gives an example of direct
communication. The behaviour is social even if an agent does not
address the addressee in a given instant, but the former expects
that the latter shall receive this information at a later time.
Overall, our suggestion is in line with the ideas of communicative
action elaborated by Jürgen Habermas (1984. p. 86):
communicative action is an action based upon the deliberative
process, where two or more individuals interact and coordinate
their actions based upon agreed interpretations of the situation.
As to why and with what purpose an agent performs a given
social behaviour is another question. There must be good reasons
for a purposeful social behaviour:

‘... we routinely attribute agency to other people besides

ourselves. We understand that other people have
intentions like ourselves, and that individuals vary. Hence
we devote much of our daily brain activity to
understanding other individual people and to monitoring
signs from them (such as their facial expression, tone of
voice, and what they do or don’t say or do) in order to

37
 predict what some particular individual may do next, and
to figure out how we can influence them to behave in a
way that we want’ (Diamond 2013, p. 337).

We suggest therefore that the only possible purpose is to invoke

a desirable change in the acting agent’s environment. The concept
of environment here must be understood broadly – it includes not
only the social but also the physical world immediately
surrounding the agent. From this point of view, the world appears
to us as an arena where the individuals try to impact their
environment: these efforts can intercept or coincide with each
other, can reach their aim or fail. The central place in these
attempts is occupied by the rule(s) of communication
(transmitting and receiving the information): individual agents
endeavour to make their message to others as clear as possible
and understand the information given by others as completely as
possible. Therefore, the success of the social behaviour initiated
by an agent depends on the effectiveness of the rules of
communication. We can note, though, that the rules of
communication in essence embody governing (control,
regulation, management). Hence, social behaviour represents the
attempts of an agent to govern his or her environment. To sum
up, the above analysis produces a picture of acting agents – those
who perform social behaviour – as governing subjects whose
cooperation and antagonisms generate social life.
In conclusion, we arrive at the definition that

38
 Social behaviour is governing the environment by means of
information.

We derive this definition mostly based on the interpretive

sociological concepts. Often these concepts are called ‘anti-
positivist’ as they state that the positivistic approach is not
sufficient to fully understand social life. Positivism in sociology
is similar to and inspired by the scientific method in natural
sciences, thus the positivist approach to social life tries to be
‘objective’ and focus on the ‘facts’ of social events without
analysing their meaning (Macionis, Gerber 2010). In fact, the
interpretative approach does not deny positivist (reductionist)
analysis but adds a necessity to interpret the information (its
meaning): it is crucial that a researcher not just records social
actions, but also understands their essence (Weber 1978b). With
this, we would like to remind that the definition of life given as
‘the information governing mass and energy’ has been derived
similarly based on the meaning of biological information versus
its amount (Chapter 2). This permits us to use the definition of
social behaviour formulated in this chapter for analysing not only
social but also biological systems and thus construct a uniform
approach to biological evolution and social history. The next
chapter is devoted to the role of social behaviour (as defined here)
in (biological) evolution. Another consequence of adopting an
interpretive approach is that, given the similarity between
positivism and the scientific method, it is easier to see how and
why the latter fails to solve certain important problems of
evolution. We will discuss this question in the final chapters.

39
 4. What’s up? Social behaviour in non-human beings

As long as social behaviour can be conceptualised as

governing the environment by transferring and
exchanging information, the concept can be applied to
any living being. The most primitive living beings
(bacteria) exchange genetic information through
conjugation. In more complex organisms this exchange
becomes more complex too, including sophisticated and
diverse behaviour of the animals with central nervous
system. We may conclude that social behaviour is
synonymous to life: wherever there is life, there is also
transfer or exchange of information that aims at
governing the environment. It leads to constant renewal
of information, and the renewed genetic information
creates an actual basis of the evolutionary process: new
information replaces the old and, correspondingly,
changes the behaviour of living beings.

Social behaviour is clearly the major communication medium for

transmitting and receiving information in human societies, whilst
in bacteria this might not be so obvious. However, if we remind
ourselves that social behaviour essentially represents a
communication (directed exchange of information, the previous
chapter), then primitive but similar behaviour can be found in
bacteria too, namely in social microorganisms (Ben-Jacob 2008).
The clearest manifestation of social behaviour in bacteria is
horizontal gene transfer through conjugation (Koraimann,

40
Wagner 2014). This is not just exchange of chemicals in the form
of DNA chains, but bacteria acquire novel genes with new
meaningful information. The new meanings are expressed
through the proteins with novel structural or metabolic functions
encoded in the acquired genes (Chapter 2). Indeed, a bacterium –
the recipient of new genes, often becomes more resistant to the
anti- or xenobiotics and/or more capable of using new metabolites
(Holmes and Jobling 1996). We also see another important
characteristic of social behaviour – two agents identifying each
other for communication (Anthony et al. 1994), which provides
an address to a given social action (Rummel 1991, Chapter 3).
Certainly, conjugation inevitably includes a stage of
identification of the partner (usually another bacterium of the
same lineage).
Why is communication and information exchange so
important? In fact, the meaning of existing information easily
becomes outdated. Such an aptitude of information to become
obsolete over time is very natural and well known to humans and
such a close familiarity might explain why no formal scientific
description of the phenomenon has been produced yet.
Nevertheless, the probability of information becoming obsolete is
so high that it can be considered to be a rule (if not a law) of
‘information obsolescence’. Let us imagine a bacterial population
that lives in an isolated space and multiplies without genetic
mutations. It means that the contents written in the genes of such
a population do not change. If the resources that maintain the
population are constantly replenished and the waste removed, the
situation can be prolonged indefinitely. Yet, the reality is

41
different: usually the resources are not constant and, being used
by their consumers, often become too scarce. However, because
the information in the immutable genes does not change, our
imaginary bacteria will not be aware that their resources are gone,
consequently, their existence might just end up with sporulation
(if this response is encoded in their genes) with the hope that
someday the usual resources will be back again. At the same time,
if the habitat is enriched with a similar but different resource, the
immutable bacteria will not be aware of this and will not grow
better even in a very fertile area – such an inability comes from
the absence of the information about the new resource and the
ways of its use in the immutable genes. There might emerge a
new natural enemy that could consume all the population, but the
bacteria will not learn about it either, and so on with any other
important new change in their environment. However, we know
that, unlike this theoretical population, natural bacteria are
mutable. Genetic mutations actually diversify the meaning of
genetic information possessed by bacteria and create a probability
that one of the mutated genes will be useful in the changed
environment (Maloy and Mora 2012). If so, the carriers of this
gene will acquire certain advantages in growth and survival.
Therefore, this advantageous gene will multiply with increased
frequency and boost the chances of survival of the population by
new capabilities of resource use or resistance to new antibiotics
(see the above); the new advantageous traits will spread faster
across the population through conjugation (social behaviour).
Consequently, social behaviour can factually accelerate
evolution since it helps spread useful mutations. The accelerated

42
evolution, in turn, creates new improved mechanisms and means
of communication so that these two processes – evolution and
social behaviour – mutually enhance each other along the entire
history of life on the planet Earth. This becomes evident if we
look at the history from bacteria to current human societies.
Horizontal gene transfer plays a very important role in the
evolution of primitive living beings such as prokaryotes (Woese
2004). Such type of communication becomes less important after
the origins of eukaryote cells with their mechanism of
chromosomal gene transfer (sexual reproduction), yet it still plays
a role in unicellular eukaryotes (Keeling and Palmer 2008).
Horizontal gene transfer is also found in plants (Richardson and
Palmer 2007) as well as in animals (Hotopp 2011), although the
role of this type of gene exchange in these biological forms is not
yet clear (Gilbert et al. 2010). Chromosomal crossover and sexual
reproduction clearly present a more effective way of spreading
new useful meanings accumulated through the mutations,
especially so for the large eukaryote genomes, and accordingly
sexual reproduction occupies a dominant role in the evolution of
plants and animals. In fact, the importance of exchanging genetic
information by sexual reproduction can be seen experimentally
(Lumley et al. 2015). Under sexual selection, competition
between males and mate choice by females create important
intraspecific filters for reproductive success, so that only a subset
of males gains paternity. If reproductive success under sexual
selection is dependent on individual condition, which is
contingent to mutation load, then sexually selected filtering
through ‘genic capture’ could offset the costs of sex because it

43
provides genetic benefits to populations. Lumley et al. tested this
theory by comparing whether populations with histories of strong
versus weak sexual selection purge mutation load and resist
extinction differently. After evolving replicate populations of the
flour beetle Tribolium castaneum for 6 to 7 years under
conditions that differed solely in the strengths of sexual selection,
they revealed the mutation load using inbreeding. Lineages from
the populations that had previously experienced strong sexual
selection were resilient to extinction and maintained fitness under
inbreeding, with some families continuing to survive after 20
generations of sib × sib mating. By contrast, lineages derived
from the populations that experienced weak or non-existent
sexual selection showed rapid fitness declines under inbreeding,
and all were extinct after 10 generations. These findings reveal
that sexual selection reduces this load, improving population
viability in the face of genetic stress.
Social behaviour becomes particularly sophisticated in
animals whose populations often are organised through particular
(social) behaviours. Information in these behaviours is exchanged
not via genes but other physical (e.g., voice or visual
demonstration) and chemical (e.g., pheromones) means. Social
behaviour is conspicuous in social insects (Hamilton 1964;
Wilson 1971; Wilson and Hölldobler 2005), vertebrates
(Tinbergen 2013) and, certainly, social behaviour is the leading
factor in the evolution of humans (Smuts et al. 1987; Tevzadze
2013).
Therefore, the above overview of how social behaviour
evolved during the history of life on Earth can be formulated as a

44
raw theory that the rate of evolution increases with evolving
social behaviour and communications. One interesting prediction
from this theory is that, because in animals social behaviour is
clearly more complex than in plants, the rate of evolution in the
former becomes higher than in the latter. We will discuss some
empirical support to this prediction in the next chapter, when
looking at the distinctions between plants and animals.
By the established tradition, the biological part of the
history of life on Earth ends with the descent of humans. The
continuation, or the history of human societies, is mostly studied
not by biologists (and physical anthropologists), but by scholars
of social sciences and humanities (including cultural
anthropologists). Yet, if we adopt an interpretive approach to the
question, the traditional interruption becomes groundless: as we
already could see, evolution through social behaviour can
characterise any form of life, and human societies cannot be
separated from the common context. Indeed, the rule of
information obsolescence (see the above) is relevant not only to
bacteria or other organisms including humans, but it applies to
human societies as well. In the open societies, communication
(exchange of information and updating) is easy and societies of
this type rarely collapse or undergo abrupt structural changes
(Popper 2012); conversely, closed societies built on the primacy
of traditions resist any informational innovations and their final
fate often invites the metaphor of the Colossus of Rhodes.
We can already conclude, at least as a suggestion, that
social behaviour is a universal and inseparable part of any living
being’s population on the planet Earth. These populations possess

45
very diverse and different types of social behaviour, which is an
interesting study question per se. Before considering the major
means of social behaviour and analysing their differences and
similarities, let us summarise how we understand social
behaviour and what its traits are. To reiterate, for us social
behaviour equals direct or indirect exchange of information
between at least two agents (above in this chapter and Chapter 3).
As a process, it can be characterised by the following
characteristics: (1) the agents begin from identifying each other
to determine the addressee of communication; (2) in reality, the
communication is an exchange of meanings, whilst the physical
and chemical nature of the signals does not matter; (3) the
exchange of meanings brings about sharing the experience among
peer agents, or execution of an order in the case of subordinated
agents – in both cases the information is transmitted to its address
and causes actions characteristic of governing (control,
management); (4) usually the social behaviour engages agents of
the same species, although this last trait is not exclusive but
inclusive: social behaviour and exchange of information are also
possible between the organisms of different species, for example,
bacteria are able to inject (transfer) their genes into plant cells
(Lessl and Lanka 1994). Humans communicate not only with
other humans, but also with animals, especially domestic animals
and pets, as we know it from our own experience. From the point
of view of ecology, interactions with domestic animals can be
characterised to a certain extent as mutualistic – beneficial both
for humans and animals; importantly, mutualism is a product of
coevolution, i.e., two species evolve in a tandem so that the laws

46
of evolution govern both, together and none of them separately
(Thompson 2005). Such cohesion naturally implies identification
of partners and exchange of (non-genetic) information through
social behaviour.
Despite the small number of the above general traits, social
behaviour can take very different forms and evolve along the
entire history of life on Earth – we will discuss these forms and
their evolution in the next chapter.

47
 5. Animal-like versus plant-like

Two levels can be distinguished in the social behaviour of

living beings depending on how the meaning of
information is communicated. The first is the
transfer/exchange of information at the gene level, which
occurs through sexual reproduction, conjugation,
horizontal gene transfer, etc. Such social behaviour is
characteristic of bacteria, protista, fungi and plants, and
we refer to this type as ‘plant-like communication’. The
basic social behaviour is important in animals too, but we
also see another type of social behaviour evolving in them
– communication among individuals. We refer to this
second, new type of behaviour as ‘animal-like’. Animal-
like communication becomes increasingly sophisticated
and successful with increasing complexity of the central
nervous system in animals. Such highly effective social
behaviour can strongly accelerate evolution – and
actually we see that the speciation rates are much lower
in plant-like organisms as compared to those with animal-
like ones: there are ten and hundred times more animal
species than those of plants inhabiting the Earth. The
evolution of this new, animal-like social behaviour
appears to lead to the origin of humans.

Biology emerged as a united discipline relatively recently, in the

early 19th century, although in the 17th-18th centuries the word

48
‘biology’ was occasionally used by different prominent scientists
such as Carl Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Coleman
1971). Today biology is understood as a science which studies
life and living organisms, their structure, function, growth,
evolution, geographical distributions, taxonomy and systematics.
Such meaning of ‘biology’ spread widely after Gottfried
Reinhold Treviranus published six volumes of his magnum opus
Biologie, oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur during 1802–
1822. However, the history of the sciences about living beings
begins much earlier, in Ancient Greece, where Aristotle
introduced zoology, a science about animals (Barnes 2014),
whilst his disciple Theophrastus introduced botany, a science
about plants (Hort 1916). These two separate disciplines became
closer to each other after Carl Linnaeus worked out the general
principles of taxonomy for both plants and animals (Koerner
2009). Starting from the 19th century, the developments in
physiology, biochemistry, selective breeding, microbiology, etc.
demonstrated that, from the point of view of physics and
chemistry, the general principles of life in plants and animals are
very similar. These generalisations paved the way to modern
biology (Carroll 2007; Coleman 1971). Nevertheless,
segmentation of biology into zoology and botany is still clearly
present and can be traced in biological disciplines such as
genetics, ecology, physiology, biochemistry, taxonomy, etc.
Indeed, biologists usually specify the targets of their study
whether they are plants or animals. Accordingly, there are
formally recognised sub-disciplines such as plant physiology,
plant ecology, plant geography versus corresponding fields that

49
study physiology, ecology, geography of animals. Indeed, the
difference between plants and animals strikes us in our daily
perceptions: children often fail to perceive plants as living beings,
and their parents put serious effort into giving a compelling
explanation why plants are as alive as animals – they breathe,
grow, reproduce and die, just like animals. The differential
perception of plants and animals can also be traced in languages.
For example, the ancient Georgian ‘tskhoveli’ (ცხოველი) meant
‘living’, while today it means ‘animal’; likewise, the ancient
Slavonic ‘život’ meant ‘life’, while in many modern Slavonic
languages it refers to animals (e.g., ‘životinja’ in Croatian,
‘животное – životnoe’ in Russian). In Eastern Asian languages
such as Bengali, the word �াণী (prānī) has meanings of both
‘being’ and ‘animal’. In Greek, αναζωογόνο (anazoogonó) means
‘reanimate, and ζώο (zoo) is animal; likewise, in Armenian
‘animate’ is վերակենդանացնել (verakendanats’nel), while the
‘animal’ is կենդանուն (kendanun). ‘Animal’ as a noun comes
from Latin ‘animalis’, which means ‘having breath’. World
languages abound in similar examples.
As we know from our school years, the two major traits that
distinguish typical plants from typical animals are motion and
autotrophy, or the ability of ‘self-feeding’. Plants usually are
attached to the soil by roots that absorb inorganic nutrients
containing hydrogen, potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. from
soil, whilst leaves absorb carbon dioxide from the air. From these
simple substances, plants synthesise complex organic compounds
such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, etc. in the process of
photosynthesis driven by the solar energy. Plants then use the

50
synthesised organic matter for growing and reproducing. Unlike
plants, animals are motile heterotrophs, i.e., they need a biomass
of plants and/or other animals as food. Some unicellular
organisms are motile and capable of switching from autotrophy
to heterotrophy and back (e.g., the dinoflagellates, Kamykowski
1995). However, the multicellular forms that emerged in the
process of evolution could not maintain such mixed strategies and
had to make a choice between the two options. The plants choose
the ‘passive’ way: absorption of nutrients that are ubiquitous and
easy to find in many environments: sunlight, carbon dioxide in
the air and various minerals from the soil dissolved in water.
These resources arrive at the plants, and so they do not spend
energy in foraging or chasing and capturing their food. In fact,
motile plants would require large amounts of energy, larger than
photosynthesis can provide: typically a plant converts into
organic mass no more than 0.5% of the received solar energy
(Hall, Rao 1999). The same problem is also found in
technologies: even though the efficiency of solar panels is
increasing (up to 20% of the received solar energy is converted
into electricity in current commercial models), still solar vehicles
are not workable. The problem is that solar energy is ‘dispersed’
and collection of sufficient amounts for moving requires large
surfaces (Pimentel et al. 1994). Sedentary life permits plants to
save energy, develop sufficiently large surfaces of leaves as ‘solar
panels’ and accumulate biomass, which then are used by
herbivores. This primary biomass can be seen as ‘accumulated’
solar energy, which herbivores consume for their growth and
reproduction. The energy is also sufficient for active motion,

51
foraging and finding new food resources, thus animals opted for
motility and ‘active’ life. The better animals understand their
environment – recognise food, locate water source, sense
enemies, find shelters, etc. – the more advantage they take from
motility. Exploring and employing environmental resources
certainly require complex behaviours, which include operation of
sensory organs and centres of signal processing – neural circuits.
Bacterial conjugation can be considered a proto-form of
sexual reproduction (Markov 2014). At the same time, bacterial
conjugation can be considered to be the most ancient, primitive
or proto-form of social behaviour (exchange of information; see
the previous chapter). Therefore, bacterial conjugation can be not
only a proto-form of social behaviour, but also a proto-form of
sexual behaviour (sensu Wickler 1972). Like in bacteria, social
behaviour in plants is also simple and is based on the exchange of
genes through sexual reproduction (sexual behaviour in plants
will be discussed in the next chapter). As opposed to this, motility
permits much more sophisticated behaviours and so new and
more efficient mechanisms of communication evolved in
animals. This line of evolution produced a profoundly novel
invention – neural circuits, which ultimately developed into a
brain (Jékely 2011). With such a new powerful processor of
information, animal behaviour became increasingly complex,
fundamentally more complex than in plants. Consequently, our
hypothesis that emerging complex behaviours accelerated
evolution and production of new species predicts that animals
overtook plants in developing and diversifying their forms along

52
the history of life on our planet (the previous chapter). This
projection explains certain important empirical facts.
First, plant families are much less in number but mostly
have more species than animal families (McElwain, Punyasena
2007). It means that plant species are considerably less distinct
from each other as compared to animal species (there are more
species in families because their members are still similar in many
traits). These data point to substantially slower pace of evolution
(speciation and divergence of phylogenetic lineages) in plants
than in animals, which results in much higher taxonomic diversity
in animals than in plants. Remarkably, by 2011 there were more
than million catalogued animal species (953 thousand terrestrial
and 171 thousand marine), whilst the number of catalogued plant
species was four times less (214 thousand terrestrial and nine
thousand aquatic) (Mora et al. 2011). The difference becomes far
more dramatic if the estimates of taxonomic diversity, which
include not yet catalogued species, are compared: experts of
taxonomy expect 10 million animal species (eight million
terrestrial and two million marine) to dwell on Earth, whilst plant
species are estimated to be 46 (!) times less (298 thousand
terrestrial and 17 thousand aquatic) (Mora et al. 2011). And this
is not all: animals maintain an overwhelmingly higher taxonomic
diversity over plants despite the fact that the extinction rate of
animal taxa during geological cataclysms is dramatically higher
than that of plants (McElwain and Punyasena 2007). In reality,
plants possess practically unlimited ability of vegetative or
asexual reproduction (Lloyd 1980). It is important as much as
such an ability helps plants survive in highly variable

53
environments and rapidly colonise certain unproductive habitats.
One extreme example is Japanese knotweed Fallopia japonica.
The plant is adapted to the mechanical fragmentation of its body
and reproducing from these fragmented parts – pieces of shoots
and roots – in very infertile and moving soils which are extremely
difficult for other plants to colonise (Hollingsworth and Bailey
2000). These abilities made Japanese knotweed a noxious weed
in Europe and America where it invades riverbanks very
aggressively – the plant is listed among the world’s most invasive
species (Lowe et al. 2000). Another mechanism that helps plants
to survive geological cataclysms is the ability of seeds to
germinate after a long time so that dormant seeds can go through
prolonged unfavourable time periods. Indeed, many species of
plants have seeds that can stay dormant for many years (often
more than 50 years) and then germinate. The oldest seed still able
to germinate was documented in Judean date palm (Phoenix
dactylifera L.) and was nearly 2,000 years old (Sallon et al. 2008).
Another example is the seed of Indian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera),
which germinated after 1,300 years of dormancy (Shen-Miller et
al. 1995). The ability of vegetative reproduction and seed
dormancy are, most probably, responsible for the fact that the
number of extinct plant species along geological cataclysms is
considerably less than in animals and all major plant families
have survived the past global and regional disasters (McElwain
and Punyasena 2007).
Still another body of empirical data supports indirectly the
idea that plants and animals evolve through qualitatively different
routes – the data describe striking peculiarities of plant

54
reproduction as compared to animals. The first peculiarity of
plant reproduction is polyploidy: possessing more than two paired
(homologous) sets of chromosomes. Animals are usually
diploids, meaning that they have two sets of chromosomes – one
set inherited from each parent (although muscle tissue can contain
polyploid cells). By contrast, polyploidy is pervasive in plants and
some experts suggest that up to 80% of plant species are
polyploids (Otto 2007). The second peculiarity of plant
reproduction is that the majority of plant species are
hermaphroditic, which means that the same individual can be
male and female at the same time. More precisely,
‘hermaphrodite’ in botany refers to a flower that can produce both
male (pollen) and female (ovules) gametes. Even though flowers
can be of different sex (male and female flowers) in many species,
flowers of both sexes still are found on the same plant individuals
– such plants are called monoecious. The ability to produce
flowers of both sexes effectively makes monoecious plants
hermaphrodites. If male and female flowers are always found on
different plants, the species is called dioecious (sex-separated
plants). However, only 6% of flowering plants are sex-separated
(Renner and Ricklefs 1995), the rest 94% can be considered
hermaphrodites. By contrast, the estimate of the number of
hermaphroditic animal species is only 65,000 (Jarne and Auld
2006), which is less than 0.1% of the estimated total number of
animal species (10 million, Mora et al. 2011; see also above).
Why high rates of polyploidy and hermaphroditism is important
to plants is not entirely clear, yet the contrasting differences from
animals indicate principally distinct mechanisms of evolution.

55
Still another and very important distinction between plants and
animals can be seen in their sexual selection, which will be
discussed in the next chapter.
The above empirical data show that new species emerge
much faster in animals than in plants. It must be, at least in part,
the consequence of two quite radically different mechanisms of
evolution. Plant life is ultimately governed by genes whose
capacity and operability are rather inferior to those of neural
circuits where animals keep and process the information about
their environment. Accordingly, social behaviour in animals
becomes less dependent on the genes, but more so on the neural
circuits; ultimately, the acquired behaviour becomes a new factor
of evolution in animals with well-developed centres of nervous
system (Baldwin 1896).
However, the slow evolution of plants does not rule out a
role of communications in their evolution. There is good evidence
that plants do communicate through so-called common
mycorrhizal networks formed by fungal hyphae -- long,
branching filamentous structures, that connect plants with each
other to exchange water, nutrients and chemicals such as
allelopathic and other substances that can serve as chemical
signals (Bais et al. 2004; Heil, Korban 2010; Korban et al. 2013;
Gilbert, Johnson 2017). Such connections are best documented
among mother plants and their seedlings. Mycorrhizae probably
associated with plants at the earliest stages of plant evolution and
could help to colonise terrestrial habitats (Kikvidze et al. 2010).
However, the fastest evolving group of plants are Angiosperms
and their evolution could be linked to their engaging into the co-

56
evolution with insects and other pollinators, which resulted in the
development of pollination mutualistic networks (Bascompte and
Jordano 2007; Olesen et al. 2007); such networks are built by two
groups of organisms -- plants and pollinators and flowers play a
central role in the communication between the plant and
pollinator communities. We will discuss this type of
communication in the next chapter.
We will end this chapter with a little elaboration on the
terms used above: until now we only discussed ‘typical’ plants
and animals. Yet, there are heterotrophic organisms that behave
like typical plants: their motile forms are represented only by
propagules (spores in fungi taken by wind or water, ‘buds’ in sea
anemones or oysters). The behaviour of fungi, sponges and non-
motile animals is simple in the sense that communication
(exchange of information) occurs basically by means of genes.
Therefore, when characterizing this type of behaviour, instead of
‘plant’ it is better to use ‘vegetative’ or ‘plant-like’ – the term will
comprise plants and other sedentary organisms including non-
motile animals. Consequently, apart from bacteria and other
unicellular organisms, we can distinguish two major forms of life:
plant-like and animal-like. The fundamental difference between
these two, among other characteristics, is whether genes or neural
circuits primarily govern their social behaviour. Plant-like and
animal-like living beings also differ in sexual selection, which is
discussed in the next chapter. In line with the conclusions drawn
in this chapter, and also since evolution of animals is more
relevant to us humans, animals and plants will be examined
separately.

57
 6. In the selection through behaviour, sexual equals
social

Critical reading of Darwin’s original concept of sexual selection

reveals that he considered this type of selection to be a process
comparable to natural selection, whilst modern views
subordinate sexual selection to natural selection. Reviewing the
literature about sexual behaviour contemporary to Darwin, it is
easy to hypothesise that ‘sexual selection’ by Darwin rather
referred to the selection through social behaviour. Since we see
social behaviour in any form of life (see the above), the selection
through social behaviour is important to the evolution of any
species including bacteria, protista, fungi, plants and animals. It
is a process in which social behaviour changes first, subsequently
these altered behavioural patterns become genetically fixated
and bring about changes in the phenotype of the evolving species.
The long neck of the giraffe gives a good illustration. There are
two competing hypotheses explaining the long neck in giraffes: 1)
long necks evolved through competition with other browsers
allowing giraffe to feed above them (‘competing browsers’
hypothesis); or (2) long necks evolved for direct use in intra-
sexual combat to gain access to oestrous females (‘necks-for-sex’
hypothesis). However, empirical support for both hypotheses is
poor. Indeed, the observations found that maintaining a longer
neck requires more nutrients, which puts longer-necked giraffes
at risk during food shortage and contradicts the first hypothesis.
The objection to the second hypothesis is that it fails to explain
why female giraffes also have long necks. However, none of the

58
above objections matter for the selection through social
behaviour, which suggests that the long neck emerged as a
feature genetically linked to certain successful social behaviour
and then became a part of the new phenotype of a separate
population through natural selection. Later, this new population
found a suitable habitat and filled a new ecological niche.

Darwin viewed the evolution of living organisms as driven by two

major mechanisms: natural selection and sexual selection. He
highlighted these mechanisms by comparing them with artificial
selection – the enterprise that nowadays is called ‘selective
breeding of plants and animals’. In Europe of the 18th and 19th
centuries breeding new varieties of plants and animals was a very
popular endeavour, supported by favourable climatic (the end of
the Little Ice Age and relative warming of climate in Europe,
Matthes 1939; IPCC 2001), economic and political (industrial
revolution, growing of competition, Chapter 3) environment;
farmers invested more and more efforts into enhancing the
profitable traits of domestic plants and animals. Most popular
breeds of today mostly take their origins from those efforts. It is
thus symptomatic that in his book On the Origin of Species (1859)
Darwin compared selective breeding with natural selection to
demonstrate the reality of the latter.
The modern theory of evolution subordinates sexual
selection to natural selection. Most often, it is emphasised that
heritable biological traits become more (or less) common for the
members of population depending on whether these traits help (or
hinder) reproductive success of the organisms – carriers of these

59
traits (e.g., Anderson 1994). Because the traits are heritable, their
accumulation or disappearance over time produces new species –
and this is the key mechanism of evolution (Zimmer and Emlen
2013). These statements do not contradict the original ideas of
Darwin about selection, yet we believe his views on sexual
selection were quite undervalued or even misunderstood.
When introducing natural selection, Darwin wrote:

‘Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-

fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to
each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it,
then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful
to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations
useful in some way to each being in the great and complex
battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of
thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt
(remembering that many more individuals are born than
can possibly survive) that individuals having any
advantage, however slight, over others, would have the
best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On
the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the
least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This
preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of
injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Variations
neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by
natural selection, and would be left a fluctuating element,
as perhaps we see in the species called polymorphic.’
(Darwin 1859, Chapter 4).

60
Yet, Darwin felt that this mechanism was not sufficient to explain
the variation in the traits of living beings. The mechanism that
selects species according to their fitness to their environment
(sensu lato, including not only abiotic and biotic, but also social
factors) is complemented by sexual selection, which depends

‘not on a struggle for existence, but on a struggle between

the males for possession of the females; the result is not
death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no
offspring’ (Darwin 1859, Chapter 4).

Today Darwinian evolution is commonly formulated as

follows (McClean 1997):
1. Each new generation have more individuals than
could survive;
2. Individuals differ phenotypically and these
differences are heritable;
3. Individuals whose phenotype carry advantageous
traits fit the environment best and survive best;
4. Over time phenotypic differences accumulate and
cause reproductive isolation and so a new species
emerges.
Ultimately, the modern version of the theory of evolution
tells us that in an organism (genome) the changes (mutations)
occur at random. Again by chance, one of these mutations appears
to fit the environment better, survives better and spreads in the
population.

61
 ‘Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because
it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no
purpose in view. Yet the living results of natural selection
overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design
as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion
of design and planning’ (Dawkins 1996, Chapter 2).

Sexual selection, however, works in a considerably

different way. Today, it is a well-documented natural process of
which two types can be distinguished: male competition and
female choice. In the first type, males compete for the access to
females and spend considerable time mating with females; in
some cases males even try to remove the sperm of their
competitors, e.g. a mating male damselflies can remove up to
87% of the sperm of a previous mate out of the female
reproductive tract (Fincke 1984). In the second type, females
choose the males for mating and they also decide how long to
mate; in some cases females can actively hinder mating (cryptic
female choice, see e.g., Eberhard 1996). The result from both
types is that more successful males are selected.
Darwin attributed the eye-catchingly colourful appearance
of males in animals to sexual selection. Yet, he felt that this
explanation was not satisfactory in the case of caterpillars with
conspicuous colour schemes, because caterpillars do not
reproduce sexually. In 1867 Darwin consulted Wallace about this
problem. Wallace suggested another explanation: to him it
seemed probable that the conspicuous colouration served as a

62
warning to predators and thus could have evolved through natural
selection. Darwin agreed with this suggestion, whilst Wallace
continued studying warning colouration and furnished this
concept with compelling evidence (Slotten 2004, pp. 253–524).
The ideas on warning colouration found further development in
the works of Edward Bagnall Poulton (1890) who worked out the
concept of aposematism. The concept describes an array of anti-
predator adaptations which communicate unpalatability or
unprofitability of a given prey species to potential predators (e.g.,
Santos et al. 2003). Aposematism always involves an advertising
signal, which is beneficial for both the predator and prey, since
both avoid potential harm. Although aposematic traits are
generally considered to be classic examples of evolution by
natural selection, they can also function in the context of sexual
selection, and therefore comprise exceptional systems for
understanding how conspicuous signals evolve under
multifaceted selection (Crothers et al. 2011).
Darwin elaborated on the concept of sexual selection and
dedicated many hundreds of pages to its demonstration in animal
and human societies (Darwin 1871). Whilst the current versions
of evolutionary theory consider sexual selection a special case of
more general natural selection (e.g., Dawkins 2006, above), from
the writings of Darwin it can be concluded that he counted sexual
selection as an independent mechanism in its own right operating
in parallel with natural selection. Evidently, Darwin viewed
natural selection as a process that selects the individuals better fit
to abiotic or biotic environments whilst less fit ones perish; unlike

63
this, he viewed the sexual selection as a rather ‘intra-population’
process which checks weaker and less influential individuals.
Although whether sexual selection is subordinate or a
complementary mechanism of natural selection can just be a
semantic problem, we believe that Darwin’s original ideas on
sexual selection deserve more consideration today. It is tempting
to suppose that Darwin was prompted to the concept of sexual
selection by the prominent shifts in public opinion in Europe of
the 19th century when sex and sexual life became part of discourse
with the development of defending human rights and transferring
from rural economies to large scale industries. Classifications of
sexual behaviour emerged together with the concepts of
‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ (Feray et al. 1990). By the mid-
19th century several influential studies on human sexuality were
published, among them the famous work of Johann Jakob
Bachofen ‘Das Mutterrecht: eine Untersuchung über die
Gynaikokratie der alten Welt nach ihrer religiösen und
rechtlichen Natur’ (Mother Right: An Investigation of the
Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient
World, 1861). The book had seen light ten years earlier than
Darwin’s Descent of Men and became an important precursor of
social theories on gender in the 20th century. By this time the
identity of Europe’s middle and high class inevitably became
linked to sexuality (Faucault 1976). Darwin could be evoked to
conclude that it is the sexual behaviour and its associated traits
that differentiate the behaviour of animals from that of plants.
From the hindsight it is easy to see that for Darwin sexual
behaviour was equal to social behaviour (see also Cronin 1991).

64
Indeed, the intellectual discourse of the 19th century was oriented
to deriving entire social behaviour from sexual behaviour. Even
though scientific analysis of human societies already existed
(Adam Smith, Auguste Comte, Thomas Robert Malthus, Karl
Marx), social behaviour started to attract attention only by the end
of the 19th century (Emile Durkheim, Max Weber). Hence, we
might think that the high interest in sexuality in the 19th century
induced Darwin to recognise sexual behaviour as an axis of
animal behaviour.
Nevertheless, the key ideas of sexual selection described by
Darwin are valid and important today too; in fact, Darwin
described a specific type of governing the environment, a process
where a particular activity is directed to a particular aim: this
activity has an addressee and the communication ultimately ends
in mating and produces offspring. Therefore, what Darwin had
observed in animal behaviour was the ability to govern (control,
manage) their environment (social system) by means of
information: the information possessed by the male who starts
competing for the female and the information possessed by the
female who waits for the outcome of the competition (in case of
male competition and vice versa in case of female choice). The
ultimate consequence of such governing is inheriting and
transferring advantageous traits to the offspring. We might also
say that Darwin envisaged two routes of evolution in living
beings: one via adapting to their environment and another via
managing the environment (their social system) where the
management is performed using information and control. In other
words, Darwin viewed animal evolution as a two-stage process,

65
in which the first stage is represented by natural selection of
adaptive/non-adaptive traits, whilst the second stage is the sexual
selection in which an animal by its own decision and action alters
its social environment, i.e., influences the course of evolution.
In the case of plants the situation is somewhat different.
Certainly, plants acquire information from their environment and
send it back via their physiological or structural responses: often
successful adaptation is related to the modification of
environment as it is reflected in the concepts of niche construction
and foundations species (Kikvidze et al. 2015; Odling-Smee et al.
2003). Similar processes take place in animals too, yet, unlike
plants, in animals these changes also occur within their
population as a result of interactions (communications, social
behaviour) among similar individuals.
Still another description of Darwin’s views on the two
mechanisms of evolution can be formulated as follows: evolution
can proceed via passive and active processes. The passive one is
based on the ability of living beings to adapt to their environment,
whilst the active one operates as a decision of an animal. This
decision is made based on the communicated information and, by
this, changes the course of evolution, which, without such
intervention, would pass through another way. However, the
distinctions between these two processes are lost in the current
versions of evolutionary theory, which reduces evolution to the
natural selection of random mutations, practically excluding
social interactions and communications as factors of selection
(see the citation of Dawkins above). Incidentally, the latter
(active) mechanism of selection cannot be easily compared to and

66
illustrated by selective breeding, since humans dealt primarily
with the physical traits to obtain more productive and profitable
breeds of living organisms. We will bear in mind also that such
purposeful selective breeding began relatively late (the 18th and
19th centuries) when the major domestic traits (loyalty to owner,
dependence on humans) had already been developed during
several thousands of years of spontaneous breeding (Tevzadze et
al. 2015). This might evoke Darwin to highlight the physical
adaptations to the environment through natural selection
(adaptations to humans in the case of selective breeding).
The current studies, however, depict a picture with
important differences: a long-term experiment on domestication
of foxes conducted by a Russian team shows that the selection for
certain social behaviour is linked to phenotypic changes and the
latter is blind and unplanned (Trut et al. 2013). For more than 40
years of the experiment, the team selected foxes that were less
aggressive and friendlier to humans. The side effect of this
selective breeding appeared to be considerable phenotypic
changes: less aggressive and friendly to humans foxes developed
ring tails, drooped ears, spotted coats. These results clearly
indicate that a selection through social behaviour can bring about
phenotypic changes in animals and finally produce a new species.
As already mentioned in the previous chapters, social
behaviour represents a process of communication among the
individuals who are the parts of a social system. To reiterate, the
main purpose of these communications is to receive and transmit
messages as precisely as possible. Accordingly, the individuals
able to more precise communication gain advantage in their social

67
environments because they govern (control, manage) these
environments more effectively. For instance, let us assume that
some individuals in a population are too aggressive: because
aggression is poor communication, these individuals will
multiply poorly and thus their genes will gradually perish from
the population. It is also possible that singing at a certain tone is
received better than other tones in a given population and thus the
individuals with such tonality will have reproductive advantage.
The animals domesticated several millennia ago give clear
illustration to the above conclusion. Neither the dog nor the horse
is identical to their wild ancestors. Evidently, their breeding was
directed to select more loyal and socially submissive individuals,
but it also caused the phenotypic changes characteristic
specifically for these domestic animals.
Likewise, we think it would be reasonable if we consider
sexual selection a specific type of selection through social
behaviour: evolution does not act as a blind watchmaker in the
realm of animals with developed behaviour. Advantageous social
behaviour (resulting in more reproduction) spreads in successive
generations and brings about unplanned, odd phenotypic changes,
which eventually increase the diversity of the animal world. The
blind watchmaker starts to act when a specific behavioural change
causes strong phenotypic changes – we think it is a better way of
explaining the odd traits such as the giraffe’s long neck. In
particular, we think it is probable that the giraffe developed its
long neck not because of its struggle for food or competing for
females but as a consequence of certain advantageous change in
social behaviour that became genetically fixated in the ancestor

68
population. Let us consider two rival theories on giraffe’s long
neck (Simmons and Altwegg 2010): (1) the ‘competing browsers’
hypothesis suggests that long necks evolved through competition
with other browsers allowing giraffe to feed above them; (2) by
the ‘necks-for-sex’ hypothesis long necks evolved for direct use
in intra-sexual combat to gain access to oestrous females.
However, empirical support is poor for both of these hypotheses.
Indeed, it was observed that maintaining a longer neck requires
more nutrients, which puts longer-necked giraffes at risk during
a food shortage and contradicts the first hypothesis (Mitchell et
al. 2010). The objection to the second hypothesis is that it fails to
explain why female giraffes also have long necks (Mitchell et al.
2009). However, none of the above objections matter for the
selection through social behaviour, which suggests that the long
neck emerged as a feature genetically linked to certain successful
change in giraffe’s behaviour that then became a part of the new
phenotype of a separate population (in the next chapter we will
discuss the importance of genetic linkage in more detail).
Subsequently, this new population found a suitable habitat and
filled a new ecological niche. In a word, the altered social
behaviour, if socially beneficial, gets rapidly fixated as it helps
successful mating and reproduction. Selection for such specific
social behaviour in turn brings about phenotypic changes, which
give birth to a new variety (as in the experiment on fox
domestication, above) and can eventually produce a new species.
Regretfully, no research has been done in this direction, and so
we cannot provide experimental facts to support our hypothesis.
However, we strongly hope that the advances in the methods of

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modern molecular genetics will make it possible to test the
hypothesis rigorously. Meanwhile, we can still speculate about
the particular case of giraffes based on the existing knowledge on
the evolution of these peculiar animals. Modern giraffes as we
know appeared ca. 1 million years ago (Mitchell and Skinner
2003). The closest living relative of the giraffe is thought to be
the okapi (Hunt 1997), and fossils of their common ancestor
Samotherium appears to be about 11.5 million years old (Agaba
et al. 2016). These two species display distinct patterns of social
behaviour: okapis are mostly solitary and meet other individuals
only to breed (Hart and Hart 1989; Palkovacs 2000). Conversely,
giraffes are social animals (van der Jeugd and Prins 2000), and
can live in groups of over 40 individuals (VanderWaal et al.
2014). These differences presumably reflect the adaptations to
respective habitats: for okapis it is easier to maintain solitary
lifestyle in a closed-canopy forest that provides plentiful food and
shelter, whilst giraffes occupy open habitats where living in
groups helps detect predators. Apparently, some populations of
the common ancestor Samotherium had to migrate from the
forests to open habitats (savannahs), whilst others remained in
forest refugia to survive as okapis – this could have happened
eight million years ago (Mitchell and Skinner 2003). Savannah
Samotheriums survived because they were able to evolve into
social animals and live in groups, selected for less aggression,
ability to cooperate and follow numerous rules of group life, and
probably enjoying their being in a group. Therefore, we suspect
that such major behavioural distinction between okapis and
giraffes was genetically linked to the length of neck in the latter,

70
and genetic fixation of these behavioural patterns could bring
about the rapid elongation of their necks as an evolutionary by-
product.
In conclusion, Darwin’s theory that sexual selection is a
process peer to natural selection appears to be correct with a slight
modification: sexual selection is a specific form of selection
through social behaviour. It changes the social system through
altered behaviour, which eventually brings about phenotypic
changes.
This is perhaps best illustrated by the evolution of humans:
today the suggestions that our ancestors started to be bipedal
because they had to live in savannahs, then their hands became
free and so they were able to use tools, sound rather naïve and
contradict the empirical facts. More plausible seem the
suggestions that our ancestors not only were bipedal but also,
unlike other apes, were able to produce primitive speech (Hardy
1960; Morgan 2011). Probably, bipedalism and speech were the
consequence of changed social behaviour and were genetically
linked to the odd physical traits that helped our ancestors colonise
new habitats (Tevzadze 2013).
Darwin did not discuss sexual selection in plants or plant-
like living beings, obviously because of the reasons already
mentioned. Indeed, plant life is fundamentally different from that
of animals and no wonder that the mechanisms of their evolution
are different too (see the previous chapter). Nevertheless, the
current theory of evolution recognises sexual selection in plants
too (Wilson 1979); yet again this process is very different from

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that of animals and is a part of peculiarities characterizing plant
reproduction.
The recognition of sexual selection in plants probably has
been delayed owing to their high rates of hermaphroditism
(above, also Moore and Pannell 2011). Apparently, there were
other factors too, such as the relatively simple behaviour of plants
as compared to animals. For example, plants cannot actively
choose mates but just wait passively and receive pollen that
arrives at their flowers in any possible way (brought by wind,
water or by pollinating animals, etc.). Yet plants use different
strategies to boost the odds of flower fertilisation (below).
We already noted above more than once that plants are not
motile and their movements are very limited. It does not mean
that plant behaviour is unsophisticated – rather, plant behaviour
is fundamentally different from that of animals. Indeed, plant
behaviour becomes quite sophisticated when looking at their
secondary metabolism. Secondary metabolism produces small
molecules or secondary metabolites that are not absolutely
required for the survival of the organism. The basic, primary
metabolism (the pathways of decomposition and synthesis of
proteins, fats and sugars) in plants and animals are essentially
similar and this indicates their common origins (Theobald 2010).
By contrast, secondary metabolism in animals and plants differ
strikingly. Whilst plants produce a huge array of secondary
metabolites, animals virtually lack such ability and there is no
concept that would describe such metabolism in animals. Indeed,
plant genomes are estimated to contain 20 000–60 000 genes, and
as much as 15–25% of these genes encode enzymes for secondary

72
metabolism (Pichersky and Gang 2000; Somerville, Somerville
1999; Bevan et al. 1998). Determining the precise role of each
secondary metabolite in plants is not easy. Generally, the major
function of secondary metabolites in plants is defence and
protection from herbivores, pests, and pathogens (Whittaker
1970ab). Secondary metabolites affect the behaviour, growth and
survival of herbivores (Bennett and Wallsgrove 1994; Pichersky
and Gang 2000). Secondary metabolites also take part in
communication among plants through the microflora
symbiotically associated with roots: usually root exudates in the
soil contain secondary metabolites and regulate the composition
of root-associated microflora (Bais et al. 2004; 2006). Secondary
metabolites take part in the process of allelopathy, in which root
exudates affect not only the microflora but also other plants often
impeding their growth, although sometimes these substances can
enhance the growth of neighbouring plants (Willis 2007). Most
importantly to our discussion, secondary metabolites take part in
sexual behaviour and thus contribute to the sexual selection – the
function of secondary metabolites in plant reproduction is
attracting and rewarding pollinators (Figueiredo et al. 2008).
Sexual behaviour in plants is most evident in a very
common biological process that we know under the name of
pollination: it is the process by which pollen is transferred to the
female reproductive organs of a plant, thereby enabling
fertilisation to take place. Pollination in 87.5% of known plant
species occurs through the agency of pollinating animals
(Ollerton et al. 2011). The best-known pollinators are insects,
although birds (hummingbirds) and mammals (bats, shrews) too

73
can take part in pollination (Sahley 1996). Curiously, Charles
Darwin was among those who contributed most to the advance of
pollination biology. Darwin dedicated one of his well-known
monographs to the fertilisation of orchids by insects (Darwin
1979). He delved into the subject matter very deeply and made a
famous breakthrough by predicting the existence of a moth with
particularly long proboscis, which should pollinate certain orchid
in Madagascar. 21 years later such a moth was indeed found
(Arditti et al. 2012). Then why Darwin did not attribute the
complex behaviours associated with orchid pollination to
evolution through sexual selection? It is not easy to be certain
now, but for Darwin pollination perhaps represented examples of
interactions between different species rather than sexual
behaviour.
The current theory of evolution justifies the sexual selection
in plants by particular morphologies and behaviours related to
pollination (Queller 1983). We already mentioned orchids and
moths – many plants have flower morphologies that match the
shape and size of the most frequently visiting pollinators. But,
first of all, plants attract pollinating agents by releasing scents –
these are odours caused by one or more volatilised chemical
compounds produced by the secondary plant metabolism
(Harborne 2001). The visiting pollinator finds nectar as a reward,
which contains secondary metabolites along with nutritive sugars
– a recent study found that secondary metabolites in floral nectar
could reduce parasite infections in pollinator bumblebees (of
genus Bambus, Richardson et al. 2015). Attractive odour and
received rewards certainly increase the odds of pollination by a

74
given pollinator. Further, in sex-separated plants, male flowers
usually are smaller than female ones because the number of
ovules is limited and therefore pollination service is more
important for the female flowers (Willson 1979). In
hermaphrodite flowers anthers (the male parts of flower
containing pollen) and stigma (the female part of flower) do not
mature at the same time – anthers are first to reach the mature
state and later, when most anthers are empty of pollen, stigma
becomes receptive to pollen brought by a pollinator – this is how
self-pollination is avoided (Moore and Pannell 2011; Willmer
2011). The appearance and colouration of flowers are such that
facilitate being spotted by pollinators, and the structure of flowers
is such that facilitates physical contact of pollinators with anthers
and stigma while searching for the nectar (Darwin 1979, above).
Plants not only compete to attract pollinators, but they also have
contrivances that impede movements of pollinators to other
flowers so that the probability of fertilisation would increase
further – an example is milkweeds with special horns in their
flowers (Cocucci et al. 2014).
Tight ecological relationships among the pollinators and
plants build up the so-called mutualistic networks, which unite
populations of plants and their pollinators (Bascompte and
Jordano 2007). These networks are characterised by system
properties such as range, integrity and stability (Olesen and
Jordano 2002). As it appears, the structure and behaviour of both
flowers and pollinators co-evolve in these mutualistic networks
(Jordano et al. 2003).

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 As we see, the sexual behaviour in plants differs
fundamentally from that in animals. Other, genetically very
distant species are involved in sexual selection of plants. The
conspicuous and odd ‘sexual’ traits of plants actually evolve to
assist the pollinators in recognizing ‘their’ flowers. Conversely,
sexual selection in animals is primarily an intra-specific process:
its major mechanism produces traits that are meaningful
exclusively to the animals of a given species.
How social is plant behaviour? If we use our generalised
concept of social behaviour (Chapter 4), it becomes easy to see
the signs of sociality in plants’ sexual behaviour, which also
includes other species (animals as pollinators). Yet again, there
are peculiarities too. First, a pollinator identifies the flowers not
as an addressee of communication, but as a source of food – the
pollinator looks for nectar. Second, it can hardly be stated that
plants identify pollinators – the anthers burst just by a touch of
any pollinator of any species. Even though sexual traits of flowers
serve as invitations (signs of identification) of certain pollinators,
still any visiting insect can provoke anthers to discharge pollen,
so that this works rather as a one-sided identification. Third,
social behaviour implies communication – exchange of
information, the most basic of which is exchange of genes during
conjugation of bacteria or sexual reproduction of eukaryotes
(Chapter 4). However, pollinators do not exchange genes with
plants but simply transfer genes together with pollen from one
plant to another; thus genes are exchanged only among plants,
whilst pollinators just catalyse the process. Naturally, pollinators
also exchange genes during their reproduction, but this process

76
operates only among the individuals of a given pollinator species
through the sexual behaviours characteristic of animals (see the
previous section). Nevertheless, because pollinators and plants
often engage in mutualistic networks, indirect exchange of
information occurs anyway. For example, to avoid early loss of
nectar (before pollen ripen in anthers), nectaries can move deeper
into the flower in the process of evolution. It can be coupled with
the evolution of pollinator’s proboscis towards elongation (or any
other appropriate change). Such coevolution can bring about very
specialised mutualistic networks, which ultimately can have just
two species, one of plant and another of animal. Examples of such
specialised plant-pollinator couples were observed and described
by Darwin (1979). This type of coupled selection ensures that the
changes in genetic information of one species (plant) cause
directed changes (through directed selection) in genetic
information of another species (pollinator): this is how
mutualistic networks evolve.
The above three peculiarities of the plant sexual behaviour
indicate that, even though commonly engaged in co-evolutionary
networks, plants and animals evolve through fundamentally
different selection mechanisms. Nevertheless, there still are
important general processes too. First, both in plants and
pollinators genes are the major media that encodes and transfers
heritable information – the same media that acts in bacteria,
protista, fungi, insects and vertebrates of primitive behaviour.
Plants do not possess neural cells and all aspects of their
behaviour – secondary metabolism, tropisms, developing special
sexual traits, phenological changes (time and duration of

77
germination, growth, flowering and fruiting) – ultimately are
under gene control. The same can be stated about pollinators.
Even though pollinating animals possess neural system and
neural circuits, anyway the behaviour in these animals is mostly
instinctive, i.e., controlled primarily by genes and not by acquired
knowledge [to our knowledge, there are no data showing that
parents teach their offspring to recognise nectar-bearing flowers
in insect or non-insect (hummingbirds, bats, shrews) pollinating
animal species]. Naturally, gene expression becomes very rich
with participation of pollinators, yet pollinator behaviour,
however rich, remains under gene control. Situation is similar in
(eu)social insects (bees, ants, termites) with very sophisticated
behaviour expressed as division of labour among different castes
and organizing defence: these behaviours are instinctive and
based on gene control (Smith et al. 2008). Yet, in vertebrates and
especially mammals the behaviour becomes so complex and
advanced that learning becomes a new factor of evolution
(Baldwin 1896). This way of evolution, underpinned by selection
of social and communicative behaviours, has produced us, the
humans. The selection through social behaviour in animal
evolution will be discussed next.

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 7. Natural and artificial IT: overtaking (selfish) genes

The evolution of life can be presented as a continuous

process of selection through social behaviour from
primitive unicellular organisms to humans. We can see
how communication becomes more and more
sophisticated, and how the evolutionary process driven
exclusively by genes transforms into a process where
evolutionary changes become primarily driven by neural
circuits and the central nervous system on the basis of
transferring knowledge and skills by learning and
teaching (Baldwin effect). In the case of humans, we see
one more important transformation that took place: the
evolution of humans is driven primarily by the
technologies of communication (symbols, tools, laws)
invented by humans themselves.

Sexual selection discussed in the previous chapter foregrounds

the behaviour of organisms which evolve the ‘odd’ traits (lion’s
mane, deer’s antlers, peacock’s tail, the plumage of birds of
paradise, tunes of singing birds, rooster’s comb and wattles, etc.);
in fact these traits appear to be the attributes of quite complex
sexual behaviour. In some cases this is obvious, e.g., when male
birds try to attract females by the beauty of their song or plumage.
In other cases this is not easy to see, but scientific research often
finds the link between the conspicuous sexual traits and success
in reproduction. For example, West and Packer (2002) found that
mane darkness in the African lion (Panthera leo) indicates

79
nutrition and testosterone and influences both female choice and
male-male competition. The mane length signals fighting success
and only appears to influence male-male assessment. Dark-
maned males enjoy longer reproductive life-spans and higher
offspring survival. Why are conspicuous sexual traits linked to
the physical strength and abilities to fight and/or hunt in
individual organisms? The answer is genetic linkage, the
tendency of alleles that are close together in a chromosome to be
inherited together during the meiosis phase of sexual
reproduction (Lobo and Shaw 2008). In truth, genes associate in
the chromosomes idiosyncratically, without any reference to what
trait they code. Whilst genes are individual and each has a clear
function in the coding of any trait, chromosomes lack such
individuality. There are no special chromosomes dedicated to
controlling body size, colouration, shape or any other trait (except
sex-determining X and Y chromosomes, as well as mitochondrial
chromosome with more or less clear functions). When a given
advantageous gene increases in the population over time, it will
do so together with its chromosome and thus with other genes
linked in this chromosome even though the linked genes encode
very different traits. Remarkably, Darwin had a certain idea on
genetic linkage although genes and chromosomes were not
known in his times. Darwin, therefore, used the terms
contemporary to him:

‘Thus it is, as I believe, that when the males and females

of any animal have the same general habits of life, but
differ in structure, colour, or ornament, such differences

80
 have been mainly caused by sexual selection; i.e.,
individual males have had, in successive generations,
some slight advantage over other males, in their weapons,
means of defence, or charms; and have transmitted these
advantages to their male offspring. Yet, I would not wish
to attribute all such sexual differences to this agency: for
we see peculiarities arising and becoming attached to the
male sex in our domestic animals (as the wattle in male
carriers, horn-like protuberances in the cocks of certain
fowls, etc.), which we cannot believe to be either useful
to the males in battle, or attractive to the females. We see
analogous cases under nature, for instance, the tuft of hair
on the breast of the turkey-cock, which can hardly be
either useful or ornamental to this bird; indeed, had the
tuft appeared under domestication, it would have been
called a monstrosity’ (Darwin 1859, Chapter 4).

The phenomenon of genetic linkage has at least two

important consequences for the theory of evolution. First, the
advantageous gene appears not to be as selfish as the linked ones
because the former actually helps the latter to increase their share
in a given population. Therefore, linking genes in chromosomes
probably reduces gene selfishness considerably. This last
probability has not been sufficiently explored and analysed in the
current theories. The second and more important consequence is
that the genes linked to the advantageous one can (and apparently
often do) influence and control the ‘odd’ sexual traits and
behaviours. The examples are lions discussed above as well as

81
‘domesticated’ foxes discussed in the previous chapter. There are
plenty of other examples where animal character and its physical
traits are linked genetically (i.e., pass together from generation to
generation; Biro and Stamps 2008). Therefore, we will not
wonder why it happens that selecting for a certain behaviour
(abilities, character) also selects certain phenotypic changes that
result in charismatic appearances such as peacocks, giraffes,
lions, deer, etc.
The current theory of evolution, however, apparently
undervalues selection through behaviour. This is probably owing
to the dominance of the reductionist approach which tries to
reduce the entire theory to the frequency of gene distribution over
populations. The advantage of such an approach is that it allows
for enclosing all living beings (including plants and animals) in
the same frame of evolution; simplified descriptions also help
implement quantitative analytical models. However, as we have
seen, plant or plant-like life differs strikingly from animal-like
life, and the difference is sufficiently fundamental to be taken into
consideration. Probably, it was not just by chance that Darwin
discussed sexual selection only in animals. In times of Darwin
genes were not known and he was not influenced by the
reductionist approach. As it appears, the original ideas of Darwin
are closer to reality than many modern concepts; moreover, the
selection through behaviour probably accelerates evolution so
that the more sophisticated the behaviours are the faster they
evolve. In other words, the emergence of complex behaviour
increases the importance of behaviour to evolution; therefore in
the animals with sophisticated conducts the selection through

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social behaviour eventually must be more important than the
selection through physical traits.
Before analysing the operation and importance of selection
through behaviour, there is a need to avoid possible confusion in
terminology. We could use ‘social selection’ instead of ‘selection
through social behaviour’ or ‘selection through communication’,
yet the former is related to a certain controversy. We refer to the
criticisms against the theories of sexual selection by Joan
Roughgarden (2012; Roughgarden et al. 2006). Roughgarden
argues that incorporating sexual selection in the framework of
selfish genes is fundamentally flawed because such approach
ignores the difference in the interests of males and females. For
example, males struggle to fertilize as many females as possible,
whilst females seek a rather limited number of high quality mates
because the female gametes usually are many times less available
that those of males. Roughgarden suggests building the theory
rather on the basis of a cooperative game in which males and
females behave in a mutualistic way (the congenial gene versus
the selfish gene). Roughgarden names this new theory ‘social
selection’, which obviously differs principally from our vision of
selection through social behaviour. The first publications of
Roughgarden were met with a robust criticism (e.g., Dall et al.
2006), so that his theory can be regarded as not accepted or at
least unpopular. The problem is that Roughgarden argues within
the same framework of the selfish gene. It is not easy to construct
productive criticism within such a framework because the
weakness of the current theory is not the selfishness of genes per
se but rather the exaggerated weight given to genes whilst

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evolution proceeds through behavioural selection. We already
mentioned the probably a strong role of genetic linkage in
reducing the selfishness of genes. Now it is time to examine the
role of genes in the selection through behaviour
(communication).
Let us start from the well-known fact that behaviour in
animals is controlled by neural circuits that are organised in the
brain tissue in vertebrates and many invertebrates (Zupanc 2010).
Evidently, neural circuits and the structure of the brain in general
are primarily determined by genes in the same way as are other
anatomical traits and physiological types of animal body. Many
pre-determined behaviours, such as reflexes and instinct-
controlled conducts (e.g., the sucking reflex, chasing reflex,
eating instinct, etc.), are also inherited through genes. Yet, at a
certain stage, an acquired behaviour evolves in many animals and
the information that governs the acquired behaviour gradually
escapes gene control. Such behavioural information enters the
neural circuits through sensory organs and from this point of view
is not related to the genes. To put it figuratively, the genes provide
a blueprint to build a processor – the machine that receives,
analyses, keeps and processes the information, yet genes cannot
control in any direct way what information the processor will use
and process. The users can work with different types and brands
of computing machines, yet as to what programs the users will
employ and what information they will input and use depend
rather on the users and not the designers of computing machines.
Therefore, the genes can determine the general structure of
neuron circuits and the easiness or difficulty to build connections

84
between them – by this the genes can enhance or impede certain
behaviours – e.g., enhance or impede aggression or neophobia
(fear of new items) in a given individual compared to others.
Beyond these propensities in individual characters, however,
genes cannot control the acquired behaviour. Crucially, the
information kept in neural circuits passes through generations by
means of learning (offspring learn from parents, older relatives,
etc.), even though the genes are still able to control certain
heritable tendencies. Consequently, animals gradually escape the
dictates of genes by evolving sophisticated behaviour.
It is remarkable and essential that acquired behaviour
became a new factor in evolution: a phenomenon known under
the name of ‘Baldwin effect’ (Badyaev 2009). James Mark
Baldwin (1896) suggested that an organism’s ability to learn new
behaviour will affect its reproductive success and will therefore
have an effect on the genetic structure of its species through
natural selection. The concept was elaborated further by
developmental biologists such as Conrad Waddington (1961) and
psychologists such as Jean Piaget (1979), who explicitly
maintained that social changes precede and actually shape
subsequent physical changes in humans (Burman 2013). We
believe that acquired behaviour plays a similar role in the
evolution of animals too and is strongly related to parental care.
Most importantly, acquired behaviour can be no less heritable
than the traits determined genetically – learning and education
provides sufficient heritability to underpin a selection
mechanism. First, like the genome, the acquired behaviour passes
to the offspring in a slightly modified way because young animals

85
reproduce learnt behaviour with certain variation depending on
individual propensities. Second, the advantageous versions of
acquired behaviour will help its carrier individuals to produce
more offspring; more offspring will, with high probability,
reproduce (through learning and education) these advantageous
behaviours, which eventually will spread through the population
over time. Therefore, parental care and education becomes vital
in animals with complex behaviours, e.g., in carnivora. Indeed,
the young carnivorans that lack education usually are helpless and
an animal brought up in captivity most probably will soon die
even if released in a habitat suitable for its species: the attempts
of reintroducing young animals into their habitats are often
hampered by the lack of skills that they usually acquire from their
parents (Hedrick and Fredrickson 2008; Badridze et al. 1992);
these problems can only be solved with appropriate training of
youngsters (Griffin et al. 2000).
When did this new factor of evolution become important?
The question proved to be difficult to analyse and no certain
conclusions can be drawn even though some reasonable
hypotheses have been already produced (Bolles and Beecher
2013). In any case, the idea that acquired behaviours evolve at the
late stages of life history on Earth and that it is related to parental
care and education seem to be beyond doubt. Indeed, parental
training becomes necessary in birds and mammals, but it is
uncommon among reptilians, amphibians, fishes and
invertebrates. Young singing birds learn from the older ones; we
already discussed predators above; deer also care for their
offspring for a long time and education must be one important

86
component of such care (Nixon and Etter 1995). Why is this
important? To make a rather rough parallel, the difference
between the behaviours controlled by the genes (inherited) from
those controlled by neural circuits (acquired) may be compared
to the difference between the calculators and programmable
computers. All the operations that calculators are capable of are
pre-programmed and impossible to change. Conversely,
computers can be programmed in ways suitable to problems we
need to solve – this is why a computer is many times more capable
and powerful than even an indefinitely large number of
calculators.
Complex social behaviour and communication abilities in
animals evidently are a function of the brain: the more neural
circuits engaged in social behaviour, the more diverse
communication is generated as a material for selection. The most
sophisticated behaviour and highly organised brain distinguishes
us humans from other species and apparently the selection
through social behaviour played a crucial part in our evolution
(Smuts et al. 1987; Tevzadze 2013). It is also symptomatic that
the full title of Darwin’s monograph on the origins of humans is
‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex’; the
second part of this voluminous book is actually dedicated to
sexual selection, which, as we have seen above, practically
represents a selection through social behaviour (Darwin 1871;
Miller 2011). In this new process of evolution, genes concede
their primary role to neural circuits, which operate
communication (social behaviour). In animals of developed
neural systems generally and in our ancestors particularly, neural

87
circuits receive information through sensory organs, process it
and emit it through communication by visual, audio and chemical
(scents) signals. The charismatic sexual traits discussed above
also serve the same objective: the conspicuous trait
communicates to the potential mates or partners in food search or
hunt how strong as a leader or skilful as a hunter can the carrier
of a given trait be. Here ends our biological history and begins
our social history. The comparison of these two stages reveals
much faster and accelerated progress in human societies than in
pre-human populations (Kurzweil 2000). Evidently something
important happened in our prehistory that speeds up historical
development of human societies. Prior to analysing the process
let us see how similar the mechanisms both behind biological
evolution and social progress are. The mechanism is selection that
we have already discussed above for plants and animals: we
revealed the fundamental importance of selection through social
behaviour. The selection operating through our history becomes
evident from the fact that cultures and civilisations replace each
other through competition, in which societies with more effective
military organisation and advanced economy are the winners. The
winning societies on their part usually propagate their rules of life
(behavioural patterns, culture) through as much territory as they
can – the examples abound in history textbooks. It is also evident
that genes have very limited (if any) role in the development of
societies. In truth, we see that historically it is not our physical
traits that develop primarily but our behaviour which becomes
more and more sophisticated, takes shapes of vocations, acquires
rules and regulations by law, and so on. Then, what are the

88
particular differences in the selection processes between two
animal (animal and human) stages of our history?
The onset of our prehistory usually is associated with the
appearance of fossils in archaeological materials that document
existence of human-like beings; these include hunting and
fighting weapons, working tools and ritual artefacts (Wolpoff
1997). We believe that the turning point in our behaviour is
associated with developing new communication technologies in
the broadest sense of this word, particularly by attaching
symbolic meanings to things. The evidence for this are the
Palaeolithic paintings in caves inhabited by our ancestors and
contemporary ritual artefacts, which we can now interpret as
special media for keeping and transferring social information;
indeed ritual artefacts and paintings do not possess any other
utility function. Why are they so important to be considered a
turning point? Since we see for the first time in the history of life
on Earth that behavioural information leaves the body of living
beings and, in the form of symbols, moves to the items produced
particularly for this purpose. In other words, our behaviour
becomes technological and starts using items with symbolic
meanings (proto-IT). Any technology, be it political, spiritual
(shamanism), professional, etc., represents essentially an
informational phenomenon with a clear governing purpose
precisely as we understand it here – something that initiates and
guides an action (Campbell 1958). Starting from the emergence
of symbols, information governs life processes not only through
direct communication (gesticulations, sounds) but also by means
of special media and related technologies.

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 The behaviour mediated by technology or the information
transferred by technologies carries all the signs of collective
representations (Représentations collectives sensu Durkheim
2008). These are the symbols and images that come to represent
the ideas, beliefs, and values developed collectively by the
members of a given society but are not reducible to individual
constituents. They can include words, slogans, ideas, or any
number of material items that can serve as a symbol, such as a
cross, a star, a crescent, an arrow, etc. Durkheim had shown how
collective representations emerge through social interaction as
products of collective activity. Hence a collective representation
is a sustainable information, which does not depend on the
members of society taken separately, but represents a world
outlook of a given social group and explains its social
interactions. This information passes from generation to
generation with slight modifications: the collective
representations formed, kept and transferred through behaviour
technologies possess heritable variability. Therefore, we can
generalise the mechanism of Darwinian evolution to include
human societies in it – such a conclusion is in line with the ideas
of cultural evolution (Lewens 2013; Mesoudi 2011). Historical
geography depicts the emergence of states from chiefdoms (from
about 3,400 BCE onwards) as a process of conquest or
amalgamation under pressure resulting in larger populations
which, even though ethnically diverse, converge culturally
(Diamond 2013, pp.10-16). Importantly,

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 ‘states arise from chiefdoms through competition,
conquest, or external pressure: the chiefdom with the most
effective decision-making is better able to resist conquest
or outcompete other chiefdoms’ (Diamond 2013, p.148).

We might add that ‘effective decision-making’ can be seen as an

expression of effective communication in a winning society.
Collective representations based on technologies are
certainly capable of keeping and reproducing much more
information than the memory and other mental faculties of a
separate individual. Therefore, media-technologies based on
paintings and ritual items could further accelerate social evolution
until the origin of a still newer and more effective technology –
the writing system. It is probable that proto-writing and then
writing evolved from the symbols – the first media-technology
(Robinson 2007). The emergence of writing systems evidenced
by the first chronicles and other historic documentation marks the
end of prehistory and commencement of the history of humankind
(Renfrew 2009). However, our history can again be represented
as accelerating development of technologies. It is easy to see how
the collective representations find more and more effective means
for being stored and reproduced (writing to printing to journals
and newspapers to radio and television broadcasting to internet
and social networks). These processes are discussed in the
following chapters, whilst this chapter we would like to conclude
with a short synthesis.
The history of life on the planet Earth can be represented as
a history of the media that helps social behaviour to happen. At

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the same time, the history features three clear benchmarks. The
first benchmark, obviously, is the emergence of prokaryote cells.
This was probably preceded by a proto-life of some kind (e.g.,
RNA world, Neveu et al. 2013), which produced genuine life
forms via selection processes similar to that of Darwin’s natural
selection (Tessera 2016). Yet our knowledge on this proto-life is
too scant and we will not discuss it here. Rather, we will start our
synthesis from the bacteria – the living beings already capable of
primitive communication represented by the exchange of genes.
The mechanism of transfer and exchange of genes became more
sophisticated with the origins of eukaryote cells and sexual
reproduction. The second benchmark in the development of
social behaviour is the origins and evolution of neural circuits in
animals and this new media has strongly accelerated evolution in
these organisms. Neural circuits also mark a profound,
categorical difference between the plant-like and animal-like
lives. The third benchmark we have discussed in this chapter: this
is the origin of technologies in the social behaviour of humans. It
further accelerated evolution and brought about modern, global,
post-industrial and IT-based human societies. The difference of
human societies and those of other biological beings is most
probably underpinned by this new (technological) media of social
behaviour, which will be discussed next.

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8. Evolution of social behaviour in humans: from speech to
women’s rights

Looking at human evolution from the point of view of

selection through communications, we see that the first
technology developed in human societies was the
language. Language is a technologic medium which
makes human social behaviour and communication much
more effective as compared to animal behaviour. The use
of language in social behaviour laid the foundation for
conceptualising (thinking on the basis of words and
sentences), and also for ‘technologisation’ of
communications – the development of more and more
precise and effective tools of transferring and exchanging
information. Ultimately, it can be concluded that the
evolution of human behaviour is synonymous to the
evolution of technologies, and that human evolution
continues through selection of technologies. In its turn,
such development feeds changes in the behaviour and
phenotype of humans. Two specific consequences of such
reasoning are as follows: (1) from the point of view of the
theory of evolution through social behaviour
(communication), the social precede the psychic (even
bacteria have social behaviour and communication) and
(2) humans’ sexual inequality in intellectual and physical
capabilities as well as in social status will inevitably
disappear or at least fade away significantly.

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We dedicated the previous chapters to highlighting
communication (social behaviour) as a major driver of evolution.
We also arrived at the definition that social behaviour is
governing the environment by means of information. The
definition dwells on the active role of living organisms in
changing not only themselves but also their environment. In the
case of plants, social behaviour is relatively simple and oriented
towards changes of plants’ selves and their physical environment
(including pollinators). In the case of animals, social behaviour
becomes more complex and oriented towards changing the
environment primarily by means of exchange of information.
Therefore, we can define evolution as a process based principally
on selection through social behaviour or communication.
We believe that evolution through communication in
humans ascended to a new qualitative level of complexity as
compared to other animals. Indeed, humans not only undergo
phenotypic changes according to their environment, but they also
create technologies as extensions of their behaviour – the
technologies that actually nourish and have influence on human
social behaviour: the items produced by humans and sets of such
items, rules of interrelations, laws of co-existence and conflict-
resolution represent examples of means that, in fact, technologize
human life. Similar, albeit extremely primitive technologies can
be found in animals too, yet human technologies are different
from those of animals in principle because it is impossible to
reduce human technological behaviour to animal social
behaviour. Technologies are embedded in social behaviour and
evolution of humans, and technologies appear to evolve along all

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our social and economic history. Evidently, human societies
progress via selection of technologies, the process that selects
more effective communication media. The technologies that fit
the global social and economic environment better spread fast and
become dominant. Such evolution of technologies brings about
behavioural changes in human societies – we will discuss these
changes below, after a brief overview of the current ideas on
human evolution.
The theories that connected human evolution to the
advantages of bipedalism in savannah-like habitats (Dart 1925)
and to the use of hands (Darwin 1871) were revised and refined
long ago. To us the most credible current theory is the hypothesis
of the Third Chimpanzee, populations of which dwelt in
waterside habitats (Hardy 1960; Morgan 2011). The theory
suggests that the Third Chimpanzee (the progenitor of our
ancestors sensu Diamond 1992) acquired human phenotype
owing to this waterside environment. However, in the light of our
views on evolution through social behaviour, the theory of
waterside ancestry now seems to be in need of revision. We
believe it more plausible that first was social behaviour that had
changed our ancestors, and then the new behaviour brought about
our phenotypic traits. Therefore, our ancestors came to live in
waterside habitats not because they were outcompeted by other,
comparatively safer places (Vaneechoutte et al. 2011; Tevzadze
2013), but because a certain behavioural change produced a
peculiar larynx structure as a genetically linked trait; once
emerged, this new trait helped our ancestors colonise watersides

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– a useless habitat for other competitor apes – because the new
morphology of larynx allowed for retaining breathing and diving.
The causal sequence presented above seems to us most
reasonable. Indeed, in the case of outcompeted ‘weaker’ third
chimpanzees (with traits very similar to other chimpanzees) the
evolution of new phenotypic traits advantageous for exploiting
waterside habitats would take a very long time, whilst pre-exited
useful traits (even if not well-developed) practically guaranteed
advantages in a new habitat right away. Similar to the case of the
giraffe's long neck above (Chapter 6), we believe that the changes
in social behaviour of our ancestor apes caused a peculiar
structure of the throat that allowed for effective use of the water
environment.
It is not easy today to reconstruct what behavioural act or
set of such acts were genetically linked to phenotypic changes
characteristic for pre-humans. Yet we can still hypothesise that
these were the behaviours that cannot be found in chimpanzees
and/or bonobos: a set of behaviour that enabled our ancestor apes
to live in very large groups – less aggression, more empathy,
existential necessity in group activities and desire to participate
in such activities, having pleasure from being active in a group,
polygamy and virtual absence of infanticide. In reality, both
chimpanzees and humans have the genetic disposition to act
altruistically, yet humans can learn more and develop
sophisticated cooperative interrelations including altruistic and
charitable, whilst chimpanzees cannot (Warneken 2016). We
would like to think that joint efforts of molecular biologists and
sociologists will be able to test this hypothesis [another way of

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testing could be, if possible, conducting a long-term selection
similar to that of fox domestication (Chapter 6); if we
experimentally select chimpanzees or bonobos for less
aggression, more empathy, desire to participate in group activity,
having pleasure from such activities, polygamy and no
infanticide, after several decades of steady selection we can
expect new phenotypic traits in experimental animals clearly
resembling those characteristic of humans].
The emergence of a new structure of larynx in our ancestors
had another, perhaps even more important consequence. When
did the ability to speak emerge? It is a question similar to the
above. The ability to speak possibly again is the side effect of
having a peculiar larynx pre-adapted to speech (MacLarnon,
Hewitt 1999; 2004). Probably, it was the ability to sing that
developed first (Jordania 2006), and then during hundreds of
millennia it evolved into the ability to speak. The hypothesis is
based on the particular ways of expression observed in social
animals during performing aposematic (Slotten 2004) and sexual
(pre-mating) behaviours (e.g. singing birds). We believe that the
peculiar structure of their larynx invoked the use of speech as a
technology in pre-humans not only at special occasions
(celebrated by singing) but also for everyday communication.
Connecting the course of human evolution hypothesised
above with existing palaeo-anthropological data is not easy, but
not because of the impossibility to document speech in the fossils
of individuals that lived eight million years ago. The real
problem, we believe, is that the ability to speak has been
converted into speech during hundreds of millennia by using the

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tunes and their complexes into everyday social life, developing
agreements on clauses, phrases, words and their ranges of use.
Consequently, palaeontologists probably will never find a
‘transitional link’ between our biological and human ancestors:
such a being probably did not exist at all. As we see it, the
physical origins of humans started from emerging a larynx pre-
adapted to speech and lasted till forming the speech as a new
technology of social interaction.
We should now recall Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967) who
suggested that the meaningful unit of speech is a sentence and not
a word – the argument can be supported by assuming that words
were derived from sentences – i.e., elements of songs with
meaning – as a result of extending aposematic and sexual
behaviour to everyday social behaviour.
We therefore can conclude that the inevitable necessity of
using technologies in everyday social behaviour is a vitally
necessary feature of human evolution. In other words, the
selection through social behaviour in human populations occurs
in the form of selection of technologies. The process helped
evolve the mind: indeed, human mentality is associated with
naming things and developing speech, which ultimately bases the
ability to think on the sets of words with meaning (sentences).
Consequently, the speech emerged before the human ways of
thinking.
From this point of view, we can also conclude that both
phylogenetically and ontogenetically the social precedes the
mental. Phylogenetically, in the course of life evolution as
described above, primitive social behaviour was conducted by the

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first living beings long before neural activities and the brain
evolved. Ontogenetically, from the point of view of a given
human, a baby gets involved in social interrelationships even
before he or she is born; then his or her mentality starts to develop
under the influence of the environment where the person is
growing and learning technologies of social behaviour.
As it appears, technology is an indispensable part of human
existence. Owing to various evolutionary developments,
technology became a necessary component of our social
behaviour, an absolute mediator between the outer world and us.
Humans do not and cannot conduct or complete social behaviour
without technological media. The first technology developed by
humans was speech and since then humans evolve through the
evolution of technologies of social behaviour. Clearly, the
evolution of these technologies reflects on humans and causes
important changes. As an example, let us consider gender
interrelationships.
During the millennia and centuries, in the large part of the
world the gender roles of the man and the woman have been
developing as the behaviour of the superior (man) and the
subordinate (woman). The evolutionary roots are to be found,
strange as it may sound, in social behaviour. These roles actually
were brought about by two necessities: the first was preserving
social experience, and the second was propagation of the best
genes within the population. Because giving birth was associated
with a high mortality risk, the primitive human societies probably
took certain measures to prevent the death of mature women who
already carried important knowledge, skills and experience of

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social relationships. The simplest of such measures could simply
be a ban on reproduction with the aim of conserving these
knowledge, skills and experience. The situation was the opposite
with men: as long as reproduction did not present any threat to
men, all successful men were encouraged to reproduce, especially
those who lived long and by this demonstrated their possession of
special ‘gifts’ and ‘genes’ for success and survival.
The consequence was that the gifted and successful men
could reproduce until they were able, whilst gifted and successful
women were taken out of reproduction. Clearly, such exclusion
from reproduction did not preclude the birth of gifted and
successful women owing to the process of gene exchange, yet
certain selection occurred and resulted in quite divergent social
and mental capabilities of genders.
The situation, already accepted and traditional, started to
change in modern times. Indeed, the advances of medicine in the
19th century made clear that giving birth is not deadly dangerous.
The fact that the movement for women’s rights started to give its
fruits in the 19th century is the result of behavioural changes
brought about by technological advances. In the 19th century,
however, the technology did not yet allow for women to take care
of children and simultaneously pursue professional careers and
compete for high-paid jobs. Today the situation is different and
the current advances in technologies already permit women to
care for children and simultaneously grow professionally and
compete with men on an equal footing. All this gives us a ground
to assume that men and women will soon be equal socially and

100
intellectually and that such equalisation will take place in the
nearest future.
Evolving technologies can change the behaviour that
existed for millennia. Clearly, such changes will eventually affect
our phenotypes too, although we cannot predict the specific
changes. As for the social behaviour, probably gender differences
will disappear in any given behaviour not linked to sex. For
example, we might expect that the division of sports for men and
women will disappear and there will be mixed competitions. The
future will show if there can be other equalisations too.
Our evolution is very fast and it happens around us: the
changing technologies which we observe in our environment,
represent changes in us humans both directly (technology
changes our behaviour) and indirectly (our changed behaviour
will eventually cause changes in our phenotype). We do not yet
know what phenotypic changes we will undergo; yet probably
there are many still subtle changes already occurring that can be
observed. For example, there is a range of areas where the sex
ratio is changing: women are coming closer to man in many
sports, more and more women are awarded for their outstanding
contribution to science, more and more women become top
political leaders and CEO of international corporations. We
believe that all these changes are not simply results of the
movements for women’s rights, but actually are the consequences
of the process described above – namely, owing to technological
advances gifted and successful women ‘came back’ into the
reproduction of our population.

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 The probable overall picture that emerges is as follows.
Humans develop technologies as an essential part of their social
behaviour. Developing technology sustains human behaviour and
changes the phenotypic traits. Ultimately, we find ourselves in the
situation when human evolution depends on developing
technology: if evolution of technology stops, human evolution
will stop too. Yet, today there are no signs of such stagnation.
Conversely, technologies advance faster and faster.
Therefore, evolution in humans as well as in animals and
plants depends on the changes in social behaviour. The difference
between humans and other major realms of life (animal-like and
plant-like) is that humans constantly evolve towards
technological advancements. Where our evolution brings us is not
easy to predict although we see that our environment becomes
more and more pervaded by the technologies of our social
behaviour/communication.

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 9. Evolutionary foundations of the trouble with atheism

The definition of life adopted in this book explains one of

the most important questions in contemporary thinking:
why is the idea of a superior being so universally accepted
and why can the idea be found in all cultures without
exception? The answer is that, if life is a process of
governing (of energy and matter by information, Chapter
2), then we, the observers of life, will perceive it as
governing (such perception can be called in various ways,
e.g., as organising the universe in a super-intellectual
way, etc.). For us humans – the living beings with a well-
developed central nervous system – our existence is
unimaginable without governing. Accordingly, when we
perceive life in our surrounding environment as a process
of governing, our mentality automatically ‘adds’ a figure,
the subject of superior governor. In this way, a
representation of a superior being is generated at both
individual and cultural levels. It explains why the idea of
a superior being is so easily understandable and
acceptable for almost everybody, whilst proving the non-
existence of such a being needs so much intellectual effort.
Therefore, the idea of a superior being appears to be a
product of evolution since this idea is a by-product of the
evolution of the central nervous system (brain).

The concept of God the Creator, a perfect supernatural

being, is one of the principal questions in the history of ideas. Its

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importance emerges not simply from our curiosity and not for
attacking or defending any given religion or a particular faith.
Rather, it is an amazing fact that no society (or more or less stable
cultural unity) could exist without the idea of God, even though
its description varies from society to society (Durkheim 2012).
We see a remarkably common principal assumption of the
existence of supernatural subject(s), differently but necessarily
included in the creation and everyday machinery of the universe,
through all known cultures – the complexes of agreed behaviour,
thoughts, values and communication. Many thinkers take this
cultural fact as a proof of God’s existence. Immanuel Kant, one
of the most influential thinkers of all times, placed God’s
existence in the realm of morality, i.e., out of the reach of the
scientific method (Kant 1997). Nevertheless, the above question
remains unanswered. Why is the vast majority of humans so
receptive to the idea of a supernatural being? Why, at the same
time, does the remaining small minority have to spend very
considerable intellectual and/or social efforts to negate the faith?
The argument about God’s existence has a long history
starting from Plato until today. Yet, our aim is not to discuss these
arguments, their strong and weak points. Here we will only
attempt to answer the question: What is it that prompts humans to
believe in the existence of God, a superior being? Without such a
suggestion, or more correctly, without an intuitive faith into a
superior being, there would not exist powerful religions in our
reality, and there would not be any arguments for God’s existence
or attempts denying such existence.

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 Nevertheless, there is one argument for God’s existence
which is most elegant in the history of ideas and which can be
refuted only on the basis of linguistic and logical counter-
arguments. This ontological argument belongs to Descartes
(1984; 1993) who inferred God’s existence directly from the fact
of the existence of the clear and distinct idea of a supremely
perfect being. By this argument, since humans are imperfect and
since imperfect beings cannot be the source of a perfect being,
(our) imperfect minds cannot generate an idea of a perfect being
(God). Therefore, the idea of God can only be ‘introduced’ into
our minds from outside by God Himself and thus God exists. In
conclusion, humans have an innate idea of God as a perfect being,
given by God Himself. Note that Descartes considers the concept
– the idea of a perfect being – introduced into our minds from
outside (by the perfect being). Let us keep this remarkable idea in
mind and go back to the definition of life as the information
governing mass and energy (Chapter 2).
We believe that, if correct, the definition answers the above
questions: Why do all pre-existing and existing cultures without
exception have the idea of the supernatural, and why do humans
have the intuitive concept of a perfect being? Or, in other words,
why do we, who have at least elementary skills to perceive,
introspect and reflect on the universe, have this notion of the
perfect being? We believe that, when human beings start
perceiving the external universe, our life, which is the most
important part of our environment, is given to us (and sensed by
us) as governing. As concluded above, governing (control,
management) is a feature of actions and behaviour (Chapter 3:

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social behaviour is governing the environment by means of
information). Therefore, we know both intuitively and
empirically that governing is impossible without a subject that
governs. Subsequently we inevitably ‘add’ such a governor to our
perception of life by our imagination and construct a concept of
God as a Supreme Governor, a supernatural subject that governs
our life and the universe.
Therefore, we perceive life as governing and, by analogy to
ourselves and our social systems, self-reflection leads us to
conclude that, because governing exists, there must be a subject
that governs too. Who else can cause the diverse and complex
universe to work so orderly, if not a being resembling a man but
infinitely more powerful and with limitless action area?
To us it is self-evident that governing is possible only by a
governor: the idea must ‘merely’ arise because we represent the
most complex form of life, we are beings who understand the role
of the brain as the ultimate carrier of information and the governor
of our behaviour.
Such analysis clarifies why we have an intuitive
representation of God: it is because the diversity of life around us
performs as governing. In our minds it is unconditionally
interpreted as being governed by a supreme subject.
Consequently, by analogy, we transfer our private experience
(that any system around us is governed) to an intuitive conclusion
that an omnipotent subject or a perfect God also governs the
universe as a system.
As we have noted in the previous chapters, life evolves
through social behaviour, and in animals the evolution is directed

106
towards developing the brain, the subject that governs animal
behaviour. Then, in the history of life there comes a time when
governing of the environment starts to be performed by subjects
with brains (Chapter 7). We also have an intuitive idea that we,
as governing subjects, create and change our surrounding
universe by inventing and importing technologies (Chapter 8, see
also Chapter 3: social behaviour is governing the environment by
means of information). Therefore, in our intuitive representation,
who governs is the same subject as who creates and changes.
Now Descartes’ argument about introducing the idea of a
perfect being into our minds from outside finally finds its albeit
unexpected support: indeed, the perception of life gives us ground
to connote unconditionally the existence of God, a superior being
who governs the universe just as we do with our mini and super-
mini-worlds. In other words, our ability to reflect over our life
and social surroundings (brain’s function) is the basis why we are
so receptive to the idea of a God (a supreme being).
Similarly, it becomes clearer what Georg Hegel (1895)
meant by saying that the concepts of perfect and omnipotent
involve existence in itself, because without existence it is
impossible to be perfect and omnipotent. Thus, according to
Hegel, the concept of God is a proof of God’s existence per se.
Considering this proof in the light of the definition of life
(Chapter 2), we arrive at the conclusion that if (i) life is
governing, and (ii) for us humans governing ultimately involves
a subject for whom governing non-life also should not be a
problem, then (iii) the governor of the universe exists. In other
words, the argument which represents an intuitive proof of God’s

107
existence is: if I notice governing everywhere in the universe, then
the universe is ultimately managed by a governor, who is much
more supreme than I am.
Finally, we come to the conclusion that the concept of God
in our consciousness is a product of evolution: life evolves
towards a centralised nervous system, towards cognitive
reflection, and towards governing conducted by subjects (human
beings). And the side effect of evolution is the emergence of the
idea of God in our consciousness, similar to other by-products of
evolution (giraffes’ long neck, humans’ larynx). In fact, there are
theories that see religion to be a consequence of evolving mental
abilities in humans, one of them presented by Jared Diamond:

‘... what we now term religion may have arisen as a by-

product of the human brain’s increasing sophistication at
identifying causal explanations and at making
predictions’ (2013, p.340).

By this theory, anything poorly understood is automatically

attributed to supernatural forces. We concur with this reasoning,
yet we see it somewhat incomplete. In particular, we would like
to specify that most probably the crucial instant occurred when
humans started to retrospect and realise that their life is about
governing – collecting information from their environment,
analysing and attempting to control the situation to make it safer
and predictable. But they also realised that not everything is
possible to control, manage or govern, even though they saw clear
signs of order (e.g., diurnal and other natural cycles beyond our

108
control). Therefore, there is someone, more powerful than and
superior to us humans who governs the universe, keeps its order.
In conclusion we would like to emphasise that the analysis
conducted in this chapter does not answer the question of God’s
existence. We believe that our entire book makes it quite clear
that the hypothesis about the existence of God is not required to
explain the diversity of life in our world. In this chapter we made
a particular attempt to look at the foundation that underpins the
idea of God's existence and why the idea is so easy to accept by
almost everybody; it also explains why atheists have to put so
much effort into proving non-existence of God both to themselves
and the public.

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 Epilogue: against the hard mental illusions

Our book suggests certain novel ideas along with some rather
unexpected combinations of the old ideas, e.g., subordinating
physics and chemistry to the information theory in the definition
of life, description of social behaviour as an unconditional
characteristic of life, suggesting the existence of social behaviour
before the emergence of central nervous system, description of
social evolution in plants, social changes preceding the psychic
ones, etc.
All the reasoning and the entire theory presented in this
book is a product of more than one decade’s work, and the axis
of our study was trans- and interdisciplinary research. The
necessity and inevitability of interdisciplinary synthesis we, the
authors, realised independently from each other, after recognizing
that the greatest questions of human societies could not be
addressed on the basis of the methods and resources of one or
even more than one, but contiguous disciplines. Consequently,
we adopted an approach by which these questions were cross-
examined by the methods and concepts from the disciplines that
could stand far from each other.
Many contemporary thinkers insist that in future the
importance of interdisciplinary approach will increase
dramatically, whilst particular disciplines will dedicate their work
to improving their specific research methods and provide the
services for interdisciplinary synthesis like today’s biological or
sociological laboratories provide services to their clients.

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However, nobody warns against the danger of mono-disciplinary
ideologies that arise when the disciplines are considered the
ultimate instances of thinking and the sources of infallible
descriptions of the Universe.
We all know that an ideology generates mental illusions:
the information possessed by contemporary sciences is so vast
that different disciplines can easily depict and give their own
picture of the Universe. However, this picture cannot be and will
not be complete: physics cannot analyse the contents of social
action, and, likewise, philology cannot have any judgement on
atoms and quanta. Nevertheless, philology can analyse the texts
about physics, and physics can analyse social systems as
interaction networks. As a consequence, each science is able to
provide an illusory vision of the Universe within its particular,
rather narrow framework. These illusions have never been more
deceptive than today, in the 21st century.
‘So what?’ some might ask. Let us remain in the grip of
illusions, as long as science continues studying still unsolved
problems and providing services. But the problem is that these
illusions lead us far away from the answers to the unsolved
questions and generate deceptive answers: the answer can satisfy
those who remain affected by the illusions of a particular science,
but will not satisfy others, e.g., those who dwell in other illusions.
It is clear that the mono-disciplinary response in this case is valid
for internal use only and, as such, is not an answer.
One example of such for-internal-use-only answers is the
explanation of evolution by mutations: by this theory, mutations
continually occur in the organisms, and the mutations which

111
improve the fitness of these organisms will consequently be
included in the genetic heredity of a given species. If mutations
do not improve fitness, they will not be fixated and consequently
will disappear. One consequence of this theory is the famous and
elegant-at-the-first-glance catchphrase by Richard Dawkins that
the Universe is a blind watchmaker (Chapter 6). In our opinion,
this theory remains within the limits of one science – namely,
chemical biology – and explains life in the Universe as a
substance synthesised by biochemical methods, a complementary
interception of random incidents where diversity is generated by
chance and survives if it fits the environment. However, Dawkins
and his multiple followers still perceive the Universe as being
created by a subject, at least at the metaphoric level (the Blind
Watchmaker). It works against them when they try to prove the
in-existence of God. Ultimately, the universe of Dawkins is
created by a blind biochemist who tries to apply his knowledge to
social systems too (the ‘memetics’ of Dawkins).
We believe our study shows how it is possible to escape the
illusions of mono-sciences: when we felt that the answer of one
discipline to a given question was unsatisfactory, or a method of
one science reached its verge of capabilities, we did not try to
remain within the frames of this science and end up with a
speculative answer. Rather, we started seeking answers in other
sciences/disciplines. We would like to think that this approach
has paid off.
Based both on modern scientific data and, again and again,
on the authentic texts and observations of Charles Darwin, our
theory excludes even the metaphor of God from the consequential

112
representations of evolution. Instead, it gives a clear picture of
life evolution where fixation of social behaviour is followed by
genotypic and phenotypic changes, but not vice versa as it is
given in the current versions of evolutionary theory where
mutations are checked by the environment that includes social
behaviour/communication.
Finally, the last but not least: our theory places the
development of technologies by humans in the framework of life
evolution. As a consequence, the development of the human
world does not look like a process that is separated from the
animal world by consciousness or any other wall.
We would like to think that we have marked sufficiently
well the possible answers to the questions that were either long
avoided or responded with for-internal-use-only answers by the
researchers in the captivity of mono-scientific illusions.

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