Preface to special issue on cooperation in selfish systems

The problem of understanding the conditions under which cooperation or altruism can be sustained between interacting selfish entities is a fundamental issue in both biology and the social sciences

Towards the evolution of social structure

To what extent can social structure result from evolutionary processes as popposed to being deliberately organised? To begin to answer this questions five different but releated social simulations are reviewed, and a map of which mechanisms might results in what structures under what conditions being started. These show that different structures can be brought about by evolutionary processes based on the abilities and propensities of the individuals. The article ends with some challenges—to construct a credible simulations of more sophisticated structures: social group selection and self-organised value chains