Social cohesion needs natural selection or rational foresight, not just function

Evidence

This is a teleological or ‘functional’ argument, of course, open to the objection that the need for the cohesion of social groups will not automatically engender that cohesion. In the absence of a designer and creator, the favourite logical substitutes are our old friends, natural selection and rational foresight. Presumably each of them operates, though no one really knows in what proportion. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1934

Categorization

• XREF: The natural-selection vs rational-foresight dichotomy maps onto the reader’s Luhmann/Hardin synthesis: Hardin’s rational-actor constraint theory of trust is ‘rational foresight,’ while group-selection theories of kinship trust invoke natural selection. — connects to: The people now function as social cohesion rather than social change — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 885