Crossing scales, crossing disciplines: collective motion and collective action in the Global Commons.

Author
Publication Year
2010

Type

Journal Article
Abstract

Two conflicting tendencies can be seen throughout the biological world: individuality and collective behaviour. Natural selection operates on differences among individuals, rewarding those who perform better. Nonetheless, even within this milieu, cooperation arises, and the repeated emergence of multicellularity is the most striking example. The same tendencies are played out at higher levels, as individuals cooperate in groups, which compete with other such groups. Many of our environmental and other global problems can be traced to such conflicts, and to the unwillingness of individual agents to take account of the greater good. One of the great challenges in achieving sustainability will be in understanding the basis of cooperation, and in taking multicellularity to yet a higher level, finding the pathways to the level of cooperation that is the only hope for the preservation of the planet.

Journal
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
Volume
365
Issue
1537
Pages
13-8
Date Published
01/2010
ISSN Number
1471-2970
Alternate Journal
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
PMCID
PMC2842704
PMID
20008381