Systemic biology reveals cooperation as life’s core: Why mainstream science ignored mutualism’s role until now
Original framing: “New Scientist recommends Togetherness, a radical new view of life” — New Scientist
Indigenous epistemologies have long recognized cooperation as the scaffolding of life, from the *milpa* systems of Mesoamerica (where maize, beans, and squash grow synergistically) to the Aboriginal Australian practice of *fire stick farming*, which relies on interspecies mutualism. Western science’s late embrace of cooperation reflects a failure to engage with these knowledge systems, which were systematically suppressed during colonialism. The 'radical' label in the headline is ironic: cooperation is ancient, not novel, in human thought.
The 'radical' revelation that cooperation underpins life is, in truth, a rediscovery of what indigenous cultures and marginalized scientists have long known: life is a web of mutual aid, not a jungle of competition.
This paradigm shift exposes the complicity of Western science in upholding extractive capitalism, where the myth of 'survival of the fittest' justified colonialism, industrial agriculture, and financial speculation. The erasure of cooperative frameworks—from Kropotkin’s anarchist mutual aid to the Māori concept of *whanaungatanga*—was not an oversight but a structural feature of a science that served empire. Yet the current embrace of cooperation by institutions like New Scientist risks commodifying it as another 'innovation' to be patented or monetized, rather than a lived ethic demanding systemic change. The solution pathways must therefore center decolonization, not just discovery: rewriting curricula to honor indigenous knowledge, funding conservation that mimics natural mutualism, and designing economies where cooperation is the default, not the exception. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the system that once ridiculed cooperation now claims to champion it—but the real radicalism lies in dismantling the power structures that made such a claim necessary in the first place.