ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that biological evolution, systemic differentiation and growth are isomorphic processes answering to an overarching logic, namely the ontogeny of autopoietic unities. It illustrates how the latter allows posing the problem of social change in terms of the actuation of human potentials, often mediated by political communications, and critically re-interpreted by social theory. The hypercomplexity of the societal sphere, which is due to the unparalled cognitive capacities of the human actors, confronts the student of politics with a unique problem. Herbert Spencer remains the most interesting of the earlier evolutionists because he was primarily a political theorist. Spencer used his theory of evolution to prove that it is impossible to compute the costs and benefits of alternative societal choices. This, in turn, justified in his view a state of competition among enterprising but blind individuals whose ontological status evokes that of atoms in classical physics.
