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The scope of this book can be described best as a compilation of papers presented to an imaginary interdisciplinary conference on philosophical and material problems of biosocial evolution. The conference is espe- cially designed to discuss unifying theoretical approaches to pheno- mena of both increasing structural complexity ( natural self-organi- sation ) and biosocial adaptation. Among the contributors to the confe- rence are mathematical system theoretists, philosophers of science, theoretical population biologists, and social scientists. The only diffe- rence to a real conference of this kind is that all contributions are deli- vered by one and the same author, who also tries to integrate them to some higher degree than can normally be attained in conference papers. Technically, this integration amounts to the embedding of the biobeha- vioural concepts of evolutionarily stable and unstable strategies into the framework of the structure and stability of hierarchical systems. When embarking on my work on philosophical and interdisciplinary problems of the life sciences about 6 years ago, I decided not to contri- bute to the obscurantist talk of - horribile dictu - emergence , onto- logical reductionism and the like contaminating the recent sociobio- logy debate. I rather found it a genuinely philosophical task to analyse this talk, and so I attempted to recast the relevant concepts and princip- les into a form allowing for definite conclusions. Among other things, which I hope the reader will find more pleasant, this attempt had some unfortunate effect, however.
