In his book , Steps Toward Life, Manfred Eigen discusses the evolution of viruses as a way of looking for the origins of life. Since viruses do not have genes, in fact they are something like genes themselves, Eigen had to make the notion of evolution more generally applicable.

To understand viral evolution he defines the conditions of a system that can evolve. Slightly modified to make them more suitable for our use, Eigen's requirements for a system to evolve are:

1. The system is composed of individuals, called
"replicators" who are self-reproducing; i.e., they
come into existence by the copying of individuals
already existing, not by the creation of new
individuals de novo.

2. The copying in (1.) is not perfect, so that
there can be differences (called "mutations")
between the replicators of one
generation and the next.

3. The system must be far from equilibrium,
i.e. there must be some surplus of energy to
get the system up out of the thermodynamic noise.
Without this the changes of (2.) would decay
without further propagation.

As a gedankenexperiment we can consider a system of "Behavers" . "Behavers" are replicators because, even in a complex, sophisticated culture like ours, the primary model for behavior is the behavior of the parents. At the same time Behavers are individuals, so the copying is not perfect. Children are not always clones of their parents.

It also takes external energy (in the form of food, shelter, and social infrastructure) to maintain a population of Behavers. In fact there appears to be more behavioral evolution in the temperate zones than the tropics, possibly because more energy is needed to maintain the infrastructure.

Thus behavior is a quality that meets Eigen's criteria and the behavior of a population of Behavers can evolve whether or not there are genetic factors in the determination of behavior.

This means we have demonstrated that:

1. The behavior of a group of human beings
can be said to evolve in the same way
as the gene pool of a subspecies evolves.
We can use that general principle to explain
the change of social behavior from one style
to another.

2. The basic trend of human social evolution,
as guided by the Law of the Survival of the
Just-Barely-Fit, is that cooperative, even
altruistic, intra-species behavior
will be favored over individualistic,
competitive intra-species behavior.
Selfish behavior may benefit the
individual, but cooperative behavior
will benefit the species and it is the
species, not the individual, that has to survive.

This would be true of any social animal, which is why we see reflections of our behavior in ant nests and buffalo herds. But in subsequent pages we will show that there is a unique factor affecting the social behavior of human beings. This produces human behavior patterns that are unique to the human species, including the behavior patterns we call "religious". We will see that a scientific theory of evolution will explain even the behavior of creationists and Darwinians.

We will see that a theory of evolution based on the Law of Survival of the Just-Barely-Fit makes all human behavior easily understandable; whereas if we based an evolutionary theory on the Law of Survival of the Fittest only the behavior of the elite would be deemed scientifically proper. That was the kind of evolutionary theory favored in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. The theory we will develop will make sense out of egalitarian societies.

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