Research SUmmary

Perhaps the main question for students of social evolution is how integrated aggregates form from self-interested, autonomous components. These changes, termed evolutionary transitions in individuality, are thought to occur as a result of a reorganization in fitness due to increasing correlation among components. As this process unfolds in evolutionary time, a map is built that specifies through an interaction with the environment how aggregate structure arises from interactions among lower level components. In organismal evolution, this map is called the genotype-phenotype map and the process is called the evolution of development. We refer to this process as the evolution of construction so that we might include in it the consideration of how societies arise from aggregates.

Our research on construction dynamics combines selectionist, constraints, mechanistic, and computational perspectives in order to build a theory of how aggregate structure arises. We explicitly integrate ideas from “complex systems science” (e.g. emergence, self-organization) into mainstream evolutionary theory.

Primary motivations are to understand the conditions and mechanisms supporting the emergence of slow timescale variables in the evolution of aggregate structures, and the implications of multiple, overlapping networks for robustness and adaptability.

The Construction Dynamics Group uses a comparative model systems approach to identify a set of general architectural and dynamical principles relating to robustness, endogenous conflict, signaling dynamics, and uncertainty reduction in a diverse set of biological and social systems. This work crosses disciplinary boundaries in that it makes use of data and insights from evolutionary theory, evo-devo, animal behavior, ecology, neuroscience, cognition and linguistics, anthropology, sociology, game theory, network theory, dynamical systems, and information theory. 

“Meta--interests” of the group include establishing causality in complex systems, experimental methods for studying complex systems, and criteria for choosing good model systems for construction and social evolution.

This research is funded by the NSF & NIH.