Some new info re: evolution you might want to consider before taking the gene view of evolution to its logical conclusions:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/qh67113u60887314/
“Although we agree that evolutionary theory is not undergoing a Kuhnian revolution, the incorporation of new data and ideas about hereditary variation, and about the role of development in generating it, is leading to a version of Darwinism that is very different from the gene-centred one that dominated evolutionary thinking in the second half of the twentieth century.”
Some new info re: evolution you might want to consider before taking the gene view of evolution to its logical conclusions:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/qh67113u60887314/ “Although we agree that evolutionary theory is not undergoing a Kuhnian revolution, the incorporation of new data and ideas about hereditary variation, and about the role of development in generating it, is leading to a version of Darwinism that is very different from the gene-centred one that dominated evolutionary thinking in the second half of the twentieth century.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/030929054959.htm how new thinking applies to societies
Is not your second link dealt with by http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/ or am I misreading one of the two? It seems to leave the main causal mechanism abstract enough to prove anything.