SYNERGY, CYBERNETICS AND THE EVOLUTION OF POLITICS

Synergy (including the subcategory of symbiosis) has played a signific ant creative role in evolution; it has been a prodigious source of evo lutionary novelty. Elsewhere it has been proposed that the functional (selective) advantages associated with various forms of synergistic ph enomena have been an important cause of the evolution of complex syste ms over time. Underlying the many specific steps in the complexificati on process, a common functional principle has been operative. Furtherm ore, a major co-determinant of this process has been the parallel evol ution of cybernetic processes and systems. This paper will briefly des cribe this theory (and some of the evidence for it) and will discuss i n some detail how the theory relates specifically to the evolution of politics.