Peter A Corning
Biographic Data
| ID | 264239 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter A Corning |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter A |
| FAMILY NAME | Corning |
| SIGNATURE | CORNING P A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute for the Study of Learning and Expertise |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
International Society for the Systems Sciences keynote address: Building a global superorganism, a new paradigm for a species in peril
The growth‐oriented economic strategy that has largely prevailed in Western societies over the past two centuries is literally at a dead‐end, along with our global system of independent and sometimes deeply competitive nation states. As we have seen once again with the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the devastating global economic recession and, more important, our rapidly escalating climate crisis, the world is becoming ever more interdependen…
Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution and the Rise of Humankind
The re-emergence of emergence, and the causal role of synergy in emergent evolution
The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice
The Synergism Hypothesis Thirty years later
I think it is fair to say that synergy is an idea whose time has finally come. It seems that every week another new example of synergy is reported in some scientific journal, and articles about synergy are nowadays routinely accepted for publication in various disciplines. This was certainly not the case 30 years ago. Back then using the term “synergy” in a journal submission was an almost certain kiss of death. I speak from personal experience. …
Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind
The Magic Castle
The whole is something over and above its parts, and not just the sum of them all. Aristotle The power and majesty of nature in all its aspects is lost on one who contemplates it merely in the detail of its parts and not as a whole. Pliny (The Elder) In the new cosmology, the entire universe is viewed as the product of an evolutionary process. The distinguished physicist Timothy Ferris, in his recent tour de force on the subject, The Whole Sheban…
Holistic Darwinism: The new evolutionary paradigm and some implications for political science
Holistic Darwinism is a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that is currently underway in evolutionary biology and related disciplines. Important developments include (1) a growing appreciation for the fact that evolution is a multilevel process, from genes to ecosystems, and that interdependent coevolution is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature; (2) a revitalization of group selection theory, which was banned (prematurely) from evolutionary …
Evolutionary ethics: An idea whose time has come? An overview and an affirmation
Evolutionary ethics is a subject that has been debated ever since Darwin's day. The basic issue, in a nutshell, is whether or not human ethical systems can be explained — and justified — in terms of evolutionary principles. In recent years there has been an upsurge of publications devoted to this issue, including many new books (as well as a number of books on Darwinism and religion) and countless journal articles. Indeed, an Internet search usin…
Fair Shares”: Beyond capitalism and socialism, or the biological basis of social justice
The accumulating scientific evidence -- across many disciplines -- regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call ''Fair Shares.'' This paradigm consists of three complementary n…
Continuing Dialogue the Sociobiology of Democracy Revisited: A Reply and a Reiteration
The response by Somit and Peterson to my earlier commentary in this journal (Corning, 2000), which sharply criticized their little-noticed 1997 book (by their own admission), must seem like old news that should be relegated to the obituary pages. On the contrary, it concerns one of the central political issues of our time—what sustains modern democracy, and what are its future prospects. Somit and Peterson in their modest book offered both a diag…
The Sociobiology of Democracy: Is Authoritarianism in Our Genes
I n the famous (some would say infamous) final chapter of his discipline-defining volume, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , biologist Edward O. Wilson invited us to consider humankind as if we were zoologists from another planet. In this light, Wilson said, “the humanities and social sciences shrink to specialized branches of biology” (1975:547). One of the functions of the new discipline of sociobiology, Wilson suggested, was “to reformulate the…
Synergy, Cybernetics and the Evolution of Politics
Synergy (including the subcategory of symbiosis) has played a significant creative role in evolution; it has been a prodigious source of evolutionary novelty. Elsewhere it has been proposed that the functional (selective) advantages associated with various forms of synergistic phenomena have been an important cause of the evolution of complex systems over time. Underlying the many specific steps in the complexification process, a common functiona…
Political Development and Political Evolution 1
An evolutionary perspective, which is currently enjoying a revival in the social sciences, raises the possibility of a major transformation in the study of political development and modernization. It may be desirable to supplement (and in some instances replace) the concept of “political development” with the concept of “political evolution.” Political development may be likened to the biological process of ontogeny. It involves the construction …
Dissent with Frustration: Coming's Response
Although I will respond to each commentator separately, some of my responses will be applicable more generally
Author's Response: The Synergism Hypothesis
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive EvolutionPeter A. Corning New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Letters and Further Commentary
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Sociobiological (Genetic) versus Economic (Functionalist) Models of Social Evolution
With the support of a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, research is currently underway on a major effort to rethink the basic theoretical issue that inspired the emergence of sociobiology. That issue, in a nutshell, concerns the explanation for the origins and evolution of social life (human societies being only one example among many others)
Durkheim and Spencer
A limited effort is made in this article to compare and contrast Durkheim and Spencer, with particular emphasis on their theories of societal evolution and their basic approaches to social science methodology. It is concluded that, while Durkheim's sociology was heavily inSluenced by the work of Spencer, it differs in certain basic respects. To the extent that subsequent generations of sociologists have embraced the 'paradigm' of Durkheim and rej…
Political Science and the Life Sciences
At the 1980 APSA meeting in Washington, a group of approximately 25 political scientists and others, out of a much larger network of contributors and sympathizers, agreed to form an Association for Politics and the Life Sciences dedicated to the advancement of an integrated biosocial perspective in our discipline. Although this short article is intended primarily to announce that fact and detail plans for the immediate future, we feel that this m…
Toward a survival-oriented policy science
Toward a general theory of violent aggression
The Biological Bases of Behavior and Some Implications for Political Science
In what must surely rank as one of the strangest episodes in the entirehistory of science, two generations of our immediate forebears in the social sciences managed virtually to ignore the “Darwinian” theory of biological evolution and to exclude from their purview any sustained consideration of the role of biological factors in the shaping of human behavior
The Biological Bases of Behavior and Some Implications for Political Science
In what must surely rank as one of the strangest episodes in the entirehistory of science, two generations of our immediate forebears in the social sciences managed virtually to ignore the “Darwinian” theory of biological evolution and to exclude from their purview any sustained consideration of the role of biological factors in the shaping of human behavior
Durkheim and Spencer
A limited effort is made in this article to compare and contrast Durkheim and Spencer, with particular emphasis on their theories of societal evolution and their basic approaches to social science methodology. It is concluded that, while Durkheim's sociology was heavily inSluenced by the work of Spencer, it differs in certain basic respects. To the extent that subsequent generations of sociologists have embraced the 'paradigm' of Durkheim and rej…
Holistic Darwinism: The new evolutionary paradigm and some implications for political science
Holistic Darwinism is a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that is currently underway in evolutionary biology and related disciplines. Important developments include (1) a growing appreciation for the fact that evolution is a multilevel process, from genes to ecosystems, and that interdependent coevolution is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature; (2) a revitalization of group selection theory, which was banned (prematurely) from evolutionary …
Synergy, Cybernetics and the Evolution of Politics
Synergy (including the subcategory of symbiosis) has played a significant creative role in evolution; it has been a prodigious source of evolutionary novelty. Elsewhere it has been proposed that the functional (selective) advantages associated with various forms of synergistic phenomena have been an important cause of the evolution of complex systems over time. Underlying the many specific steps in the complexification process, a common functiona…
Political Development and Political Evolution 1
An evolutionary perspective, which is currently enjoying a revival in the social sciences, raises the possibility of a major transformation in the study of political development and modernization. It may be desirable to supplement (and in some instances replace) the concept of “political development” with the concept of “political evolution.” Political development may be likened to the biological process of ontogeny. It involves the construction …
Toward a general theory of violent aggression
The re-emergence of emergence, and the causal role of synergy in emergent evolution
Fair Shares”: Beyond capitalism and socialism, or the biological basis of social justice
The accumulating scientific evidence -- across many disciplines -- regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call ''Fair Shares.'' This paradigm consists of three complementary n…
The Sociobiology of Democracy: Is Authoritarianism in Our Genes
I n the famous (some would say infamous) final chapter of his discipline-defining volume, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , biologist Edward O. Wilson invited us to consider humankind as if we were zoologists from another planet. In this light, Wilson said, “the humanities and social sciences shrink to specialized branches of biology” (1975:547). One of the functions of the new discipline of sociobiology, Wilson suggested, was “to reformulate the…
The Synergism Hypothesis Thirty years later
I think it is fair to say that synergy is an idea whose time has finally come. It seems that every week another new example of synergy is reported in some scientific journal, and articles about synergy are nowadays routinely accepted for publication in various disciplines. This was certainly not the case 30 years ago. Back then using the term “synergy” in a journal submission was an almost certain kiss of death. I speak from personal experience. …
Evolutionary ethics: An idea whose time has come? An overview and an affirmation
Evolutionary ethics is a subject that has been debated ever since Darwin's day. The basic issue, in a nutshell, is whether or not human ethical systems can be explained — and justified — in terms of evolutionary principles. In recent years there has been an upsurge of publications devoted to this issue, including many new books (as well as a number of books on Darwinism and religion) and countless journal articles. Indeed, an Internet search usin…
The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive EvolutionPeter A. Corning New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Letters and Further Commentary
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Toward a survival-oriented policy science
The Biological Bases of Behavior and Some Implications for Political Science
In what must surely rank as one of the strangest episodes in the entirehistory of science, two generations of our immediate forebears in the social sciences managed virtually to ignore the “Darwinian” theory of biological evolution and to exclude from their purview any sustained consideration of the role of biological factors in the shaping of human behavior
Toward a general theory of violent aggression
Toward a survival-oriented policy science
Political Science and the Life Sciences
At the 1980 APSA meeting in Washington, a group of approximately 25 political scientists and others, out of a much larger network of contributors and sympathizers, agreed to form an Association for Politics and the Life Sciences dedicated to the advancement of an integrated biosocial perspective in our discipline. Although this short article is intended primarily to announce that fact and detail plans for the immediate future, we feel that this m…
Sociobiological (Genetic) versus Economic (Functionalist) Models of Social Evolution
With the support of a grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, research is currently underway on a major effort to rethink the basic theoretical issue that inspired the emergence of sociobiology. That issue, in a nutshell, concerns the explanation for the origins and evolution of social life (human societies being only one example among many others)
Durkheim and Spencer
A limited effort is made in this article to compare and contrast Durkheim and Spencer, with particular emphasis on their theories of societal evolution and their basic approaches to social science methodology. It is concluded that, while Durkheim's sociology was heavily inSluenced by the work of Spencer, it differs in certain basic respects. To the extent that subsequent generations of sociologists have embraced the 'paradigm' of Durkheim and rej…
Letters and Further Commentary
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive EvolutionPeter A. Corning New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Author's Response: The Synergism Hypothesis
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Political Development and Political Evolution 1
An evolutionary perspective, which is currently enjoying a revival in the social sciences, raises the possibility of a major transformation in the study of political development and modernization. It may be desirable to supplement (and in some instances replace) the concept of “political development” with the concept of “political evolution.” Political development may be likened to the biological process of ontogeny. It involves the construction …
Dissent with Frustration: Coming's Response
Although I will respond to each commentator separately, some of my responses will be applicable more generally
Synergy, Cybernetics and the Evolution of Politics
Synergy (including the subcategory of symbiosis) has played a significant creative role in evolution; it has been a prodigious source of evolutionary novelty. Elsewhere it has been proposed that the functional (selective) advantages associated with various forms of synergistic phenomena have been an important cause of the evolution of complex systems over time. Underlying the many specific steps in the complexification process, a common functiona…
The Sociobiology of Democracy: Is Authoritarianism in Our Genes
I n the famous (some would say infamous) final chapter of his discipline-defining volume, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , biologist Edward O. Wilson invited us to consider humankind as if we were zoologists from another planet. In this light, Wilson said, “the humanities and social sciences shrink to specialized branches of biology” (1975:547). One of the functions of the new discipline of sociobiology, Wilson suggested, was “to reformulate the…
Continuing Dialogue the Sociobiology of Democracy Revisited: A Reply and a Reiteration
The response by Somit and Peterson to my earlier commentary in this journal (Corning, 2000), which sharply criticized their little-noticed 1997 book (by their own admission), must seem like old news that should be relegated to the obituary pages. On the contrary, it concerns one of the central political issues of our time—what sustains modern democracy, and what are its future prospects. Somit and Peterson in their modest book offered both a diag…
Evolutionary ethics: An idea whose time has come? An overview and an affirmation
Evolutionary ethics is a subject that has been debated ever since Darwin's day. The basic issue, in a nutshell, is whether or not human ethical systems can be explained — and justified — in terms of evolutionary principles. In recent years there has been an upsurge of publications devoted to this issue, including many new books (as well as a number of books on Darwinism and religion) and countless journal articles. Indeed, an Internet search usin…
Fair Shares”: Beyond capitalism and socialism, or the biological basis of social justice
The accumulating scientific evidence -- across many disciplines -- regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call ''Fair Shares.'' This paradigm consists of three complementary n…
Holistic Darwinism: The new evolutionary paradigm and some implications for political science
Holistic Darwinism is a candidate name for a major paradigm shift that is currently underway in evolutionary biology and related disciplines. Important developments include (1) a growing appreciation for the fact that evolution is a multilevel process, from genes to ecosystems, and that interdependent coevolution is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature; (2) a revitalization of group selection theory, which was banned (prematurely) from evolutionary …
Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind
The Magic Castle
The whole is something over and above its parts, and not just the sum of them all. Aristotle The power and majesty of nature in all its aspects is lost on one who contemplates it merely in the detail of its parts and not as a whole. Pliny (The Elder) In the new cosmology, the entire universe is viewed as the product of an evolutionary process. The distinguished physicist Timothy Ferris, in his recent tour de force on the subject, The Whole Sheban…
The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice
The Synergism Hypothesis Thirty years later
I think it is fair to say that synergy is an idea whose time has finally come. It seems that every week another new example of synergy is reported in some scientific journal, and articles about synergy are nowadays routinely accepted for publication in various disciplines. This was certainly not the case 30 years ago. Back then using the term “synergy” in a journal submission was an almost certain kiss of death. I speak from personal experience. …
The re-emergence of emergence, and the causal role of synergy in emergent evolution
Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution and the Rise of Humankind
International Society for the Systems Sciences keynote address: Building a global superorganism, a new paradigm for a species in peril
The growth‐oriented economic strategy that has largely prevailed in Western societies over the past two centuries is literally at a dead‐end, along with our global system of independent and sometimes deeply competitive nation states. As we have seen once again with the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the devastating global economic recession and, more important, our rapidly escalating climate crisis, the world is becoming ever more interdependen…
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works)