What Are the Greatest Challenges for Evolutionary Theory in Our Times?

It is the lack of a common, transdisciplinary language and a metaphorical map encompassing the existing major systems that constrains progress on evolutionary theory. A modification of Eldredge and Gould`s model of "punctuated equilibria" can create such a map. This map should highlight a universal sequence for organizational change processes within and among systems. If this map combines this universal change sequence with the process of entropy and a preference for certain organizational configurations, it can reveal a trajectory of soft-determinism in evolution. Thus the primary information gap in evolutionary theory is discerning the precursors and mechanisms of nonlinear system transformation. However, the proposed map can be used to view all existing major systems as a single punctuated evolutionary system, with nested systems as scaled reflections. In this way a transdisciplinary language might illuminate a "Rosetta Stone" for discovering the mechanisms of system transformation. Since evolutionary theory may be the ultimate epistemological paradigm, the theory`s most important benefit illuminates new, useful insights into sociopolitical organization and its transformational process. If the map`s soft-determinism is correct, then the system is approaching its stage of nonlinear bifurcation. Moreover, for the first time the sociopolitical system is simultaneously vulnerable from within, from lower nested systems, and also from an emerging, higher level system. Success navigating this dangerous epoch may depend upon a general awareness of the evolutionary paradigm which then depends on the approach to disseminating this knowledge.