Social coordination and spatial organization: Steps towards the evolution of communication

Traditional characterizations of communication as a biological phenomenon are theoretically criticized , and an alternative understanding is presented in terms of recursive action coordination following works on cybernetics and autopoiesis. As rst steps towards a study on the evolution of communication, two sets of computational experiments are presented, one dealing with non-recursive coordination and the other with coordination of recursive actions. In the rst one coordinated activity evolves even in cases in which a game-theoretic analysis predicts the contrary. This is explained by studying the spatial organization in the distribution of agents. The second one shows the inappropriateness of the metaphor of communication as an exchange of information.