The evolutionary theme of Parsons's sociology relates his theory of sociocultural evolution to the theory of organic evolution and to the general theory of action systems. To grasp both relationships, the immanence and Darwinian interpretations of Parsonsian evolutionism must be rejected. Parsons's assumptions about the nature of change and the nature of what is changing follow from the use of Emerson's model of group selection as his source analogy. Its holistic conception of the part-whole relationship explains the theoretical fit between Parsonsian evolutionism and the general theory of action systems, and Parsons's exclusion of action from his evolutionary theory. This limitation and Parsons's restricted focus on the course of evolution can both be corrected by introducing individual selection as a source analogy for sociological evolutionism.
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