Stewart, John. “Evolutionary progress.” Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 20 (1997): 335-362.
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This article identifies evolutionary processes which produce progressive change, outlines the sequences of events in the evolution of life on Earth which have resulted from these processes, and predicts key future developments in the evolution of life. Progressive evolution is driven by the potential benefits of cooperation among living processes. These benefits are able to be exploited by the formation of hierarchical organizations in which managing entities with the ability to control other entities support co-operators and suppress cheaters. Examples of hierarchical organizations of this type include early cells in which RNA manages molecular processes, and modern nation states in which governments manage human organization. However, the formation of hierarchical organizations will not fully realize the potential benefits of cooperation, and will not end the progressive evolution which is driven by this potential: it is only within these organizations that cooperation can be comprehensively exploited. The widely recognized impediments to the evolution of cooperation will continue to apply to interactions between organizations. The potential benefits of cooperation between organizations will therefore drive the formation of higher level organizations. The continued repetition of this process will progressively extend cooperative organization across greater scales of space and time.