As humans, we are the only species that reflects consciously on our existence and how we came to be. Such musings have led us to formulate many different scenarios that see us as coming into existence through a creative act by forces outside of ordinary experience. However, within the domain of scientific reasoning, any appeal to such extraordinary forces is excluded. We therefore seek a natural account of how a species as complex as ours, capable of formulating and realizing the widely diverse forms of social systems that we know, could have arisen. Such an account must be embedded in the Darwinian paradigm for evolution, which has been fundamental to our understanding of the way in which biological reproduction can drive change from simpler to more complex biological forms.
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Read, D., Lane, D., van der Leeuw, S. (2009). The Innovation Innovation. In: Lane, D., Pumain, D., van der Leeuw, S.E., West, G. (eds) Complexity Perspectives in Innovation and Social Change. Methodos Series, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9663-1_3
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