Mediated evolution of social organisation: a multi- agent simulation

Rapid technological developments together with the process of globalisation bring about an entangled dynamic of contradictory forces: integration and differentiation, competition and co-operation, individualism and solidarity. Our society seems to be in a very unstable transitional phase, so that it is difficult to conceive how the desired result—a sustainable, integrated world system respecting individual and collective diversity (Heylighen, 2003; Stewart, 2000)—will come about. The ever increasing complexity, changeability and unpredictability make it particularly difficult to understand and manage this social evolution. Traditionally the social sciences have focused on specific sub-problems, such as the relationships between social classes or ethnic groups, or the tension between market and solidarity. Yet the problem of complex social evolution is too encompassing to be approached through a single aspect, model or sub-problem. That is why we need a broad, interdisciplinary approach, that focuses on the abstract essence: how does social organisation arise and evolve, i.e. how do initially autonomous actors, through mutual interaction, come to form an increasingly complex, integrated system? In essence there exist two, complementary approaches to this problem, that stress, respectively, conflict and the dynamics it creates, and cooperation and the system of mutual dependencies that it entails. The first can be found in conflict sociology, classical economics which sees all actors as competitors, and the Darwinist theory of evolution which starts from a "struggle for life" between competing individuals. The second approach lies at the basis of functionalism in sociology and of the general systems theory. This approach sets out from a system or synergetic whole, characterised by emergent properties that cannot be reduced to the properties of the parts. But the systems approach has not advanced much beyond a static description of systems on different levels of complexity, lacking an explanation of how these come into existence. The conflict and evolutionary approaches on the other hand are more dynamic, proposing models (e.g. based in game theory) of the evolution of cooperation starting from initially selfish actors (e.g. Axelrod, 1984). Still, the problem remains that this approach is in essence reductionist: all phenomena are reduced to the interactions between individual actors (methodological individualism, cf. Heylighen & Campbell, 1995). Emergent organisation is not explained.