David Sloan Wilson’s essay articulates with clarity the need for conceptual frameworks that do more than help us understand the world — they must also guide effective action in it. His claim that “interlocking sets of ideas” shape what we perceive and how we behave resonates strongly with the classic Kuhnian notion of paradigms as both enabling and constraining (Kuhn 1970). In Wilson’s formulation, however, paradigms must meet two criteria: they must conform to the best available scientific knowledge, and they must inform appropriate action in the world. This dual standard, he suggests, is essential in an era defined by interdependent crises — ecological, economic, political — where the cost of incorrect or outdated conceptualizations becomes existential.
The first criterion — conformance to factual knowledge — is where the newly emerging paradigm of evolutionary and complexity sciences performs rather well. As Wilson argues, scientific thinking in the twentieth century often suffered from reductionist limitations, simplifying dynamic systems into linear relations or equilibrium states that bore little resemblance to real social or biological processes. The new paradigm, by contrast, integrates tools and insights from complex systems science — nonlinearity, emergence, multi-level causation, basins of attraction — with a broader evolutionary framework that includes cultural evolution, generalized Darwinian processes, and adaptive design principles. In this sense, the complexity-evolution synthesis satisfies Wilson’s first criterion: it is scientifically robust, empirically anchored, and it is well positioned to better reflect the ontology of the systems it seeks to explain.
Yet the second criterion — the ability of a paradigm to inform appropriate action — remains insufficiently developed. Indeed, this is the central limitation of the new paradigm that Wilson himself hints at but does not fully resolve. Complexity and evolution describe what is, not what ought to be done. They provide analytical clarity about how systems behave, destabilize, adapt, or collapse, but they do not specify the principles, goals, or normative commitments that should guide human intervention.
This shortfall can be described as a normativity gap. Appropriate action in society requires value judgments about the ends we seek — justice, well-being, equity, sustainability — and these cannot be derived solely from descriptive models of complexity. What the mechanism design literature refers to as “social goals” must therefore be specified exogenously to such models. Complexity theory may warn us that interventions in adaptive systems have unintended consequences, but it cannot tell us which consequences are morally preferable or politically legitimate. Evolutionary dynamics may explain multilevel selection processes, but they do not adjudicate between conflicting visions of the good life, nor do they provide criteria for institutional legitimacy or institutional performance.
Closely related is what can be called the teleology gap. Human beings act with purpose, and institutions are infused with intentions. They embody direction-setting frameworks — ethical, constitutional, organizational—that evolutionary models simply cannot supply on their own. The teleological dimension of action requires a theory of ends, not only a theory of means. Without such a framework, complexity science risks devolving into technocratic social engineering rather than social governance systems and processes.
What was called above the teleology gap is, in a sense, a facet of a design gap. Complexity science helps diagnose why many interventions fail, but diagnosis is not prescription. Policy-making requires the construction of institutions, rules, and incentive structures — the “sciences of the artificial” described by Herbert Simon (1996). It involves trade-offs, prioritization, and judgments about feasibility and legitimacy: activities that are inherently normative and cannot be deduced from system models.
Finally, one has to take into account the problem of conflicts of value. Modern societies are pluralistic, and their members endorse diverse and often conflicting values. Evolutionary models can explain why such conflicts arise, but they do not provide a principled method for resolving them. Any paradigm that aims to guide action must therefore incorporate a theory of justice or legitimacy capable of mediating among competing claims.
All of the above indicate that the new paradigm is descriptively powerful but normatively underspecified. It can explain constraints, adaptive patterns, and systemic risks, but it cannot, in its current configuration, offer a systematic apparatus able to direct us toward the appropriate definition and achievement of the social goals we collectively aim to pursue. Wilson himself recognizes this when he emphasizes the need for paradigms that score high on both criteria, but the normative dimension remains underdeveloped in the essay.
What is required, then, is a complementary normative-design layer that can integrate with the descriptive power of the complexity-evolution paradigm. In my view, this second layer must draw from a range of intellectual traditions. From Herbert Simon’s “sciences of the artificial”, it must inherit the logic of design. From Elinor Ostrom’s (2010) polycentric governance and design principles and from James Buchanan’s (1987) constitutional political economy, it must take principles for designing rules, constraints, and incentive structures that foster cooperation across scales and levels. From philosophy — John Rawls (1971) on justice, Amartya Sen (1999) on capabilities, Gerry Gaus (2011) on pluralism and public reason — it must incorporate frameworks capable of articulating legitimate ends, not merely efficient processes.
Such a synthesis, once articulated, would thus have two dimensions. The descriptive-explanatory one — evolution and complexity — would elucidate constraints, dynamics, and systemic possibilities. The normative-design one — performance criteria, governance, collective purpose — would specify goals, values, and legitimate forms of intervention and designs. Only together do they constitute what Wilson calls a paradigm that can legitimately guide action across scales — from small-group dynamics to global governance challenges.
This integration is not optional. Without it, the new paradigm remains incomplete, with limited capabilities respond to the challenges of the applied level. A full paradigm relevant for social guidance and governance must therefore satisfy both of Wilson’s criteria. It must match the best available science, and it must articulate a principled account of how we ought to act within complex adaptive systems. Only such a synthesis can anchor an adequate response to the applied-level challenges of our age.
References:
Buchanan, J.M. (1987) Constitutional Economics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Gaus, G. (2011) The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kuhn, T.S. (1970) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (2010) ‘Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems’, American Economic Review, 100(3), pp. 641–672.
Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf.
Simon, H.A. (1996) The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
