Peter Corning is an American biologist, consultant, and complex systems scientist. He is Director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems, in Seattle, Washington.

In the introduction to his 1983 book, The Synergism Hypothesis, Corning drew the following conclusion about his new theory:

Mindful of Albert Einstein’s observation that “a theory is all the more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended its range of applicability,” I have come to believe that it is both possible and appropriate to reduce certain fundamental aspects of the evolutionary process, in nature and human societies alike, to a unifying theoretical framework…Equally important, my theory has had a life of its own... As the work proceeded, certain ideas emerged and certain connections were made. In the end, I have been impelled to follow where the theory led me. Only time will tell whether these connections were justified.

In his 2003 book Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, he restated his thesis...

The thesis is that synergy - a vaguely familiar term to many of us - is actually one of the great governing principles of the natural world. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe, and it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth. It has played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind. It is vital to the workings of every modern society. And it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends upon it.

The Synergism Hypothesis (as I call it) is a serious scientific theory that is fully consistent with Darwin's theory, and with the canons of the physical, biological, and social sciences, not to mention the new science of complexity. The theory, in a nutshell, is that synergy is not only a ubiquitous effect in nature; it has also played a key causal role in the evolutionary process. It has been at once the fountainhead and the raison d'être for the progressive increase in complexity over the broad span of evolutionary history.

Nature's Magic: Synergy in Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, p.1

Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects, 1 + 1 > 2

Synergy was well known in the nineteenth-century debates about emergence, downward causation, and mental causation. The concept of synergy was actually introduced by John Stuart Mill thirty years before George Henry Lewes named "emergence" in 1875.

Mill did not use the term "emergent" in 1843, but he made synergy clear enough:

The chemical combination of two substances produces, as is well known, a third substance with properties different from those of either of the two substances separately, or of both of them taken together. Not a trace of the properties of hydrogen or of oxygen is observable in those of their compound, water.

(A System of Logic, Book III, chapter VI)

In the opening chapter of his 2017 book Synergistic Selection: How Cooperation Has Shaped Evolution And The Rise Of Humankind, Corning writes...

Darwin’s theory does not provide an explanation for the rise of biological complexity – one of the most consequential trends in the history of life on Earth. The trajectory of biological “complexification” – from primitive one-celled life forms to intricate eukaryotes, elaborate multicellular organisms, and, finally, a highly intelligent, tool using, sociable, loquacious biped – requires an additional explanatory principle.

(Synergistic Selection, p.1)

Emergent evolution theory had several prominent advocates, but the leading figure in this movement was the comparative psychologist and prolific writer, Conwy Lloyd Morgan. Unfortunately, Lloyd Morgan portrayed the evolutionary process as an unfolding of inherent tendencies, which he ascribed to divine creation. His vision was, of course, rejected by the biologists of his day.

(Synergistic Selection, p.2)

Over the course of the past two decades, however, the subject of complexity has finally emerged as a major theme within mainstream evolutionary biology, and a search has been underway for “a Grand Unified Theory” – as biologist Daniel McShea characterizes it – that is consistent with Darwin’s great vision.

As it happens, such a theory already exists. It was first proposed in The Synergism Hypothesis: A Theory of Progressive Evolution in 1983, and it involves an economic (or perhaps bioeconomic) theory of complexity. Simply stated, cooperative interactions of various kinds, however they may occur, can produce novel combined effects – synergies – with functional advantages that may, in turn, become direct causes of natural selection. The focus of the Synergism Hypothesis is on the favorable selection of synergistic “wholes” and the combinations of genes that produce these wholes. The parts (and their genes) that create these synergies may, in effect, become interdependent units of evolutionary change.

(Synergistic Selection, p.4)