Re: evolution v. selection

Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
> "Michael Nuwer" <StopSpam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dfpu5n$9sr$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>>In my field the notion of soci-economic evolution most often means the
>>self-transformation over time of a system. It appears that a biologist
>>would call this "development" rather than "evolution."
>
>
> A wise biologist would refrain from telling practitioners in other fields
> what they should call their transformation processes.

:-)

> However, I will
> point out that biologists tend to use 'development' to describe processes
> that are reproducible, strongly guided, and somewhat insensitive to the
> vagaries of the environment.

This description is substantially different from the way in which
"evolutionary economics" thinks about development. The latter tend to
think in terms of opposing forces within some system. Thorstein Veblen
wrote about mankinds battle between predatory instincts (the "instinct
of sportsmanship") and constructive instincts (the "instinct of
workmanship"). Joseph Schumpeter wrote about the opposition between the
equilibrium tendencies of markets and the spontaneous changes of
technology (managers v. entrepreneurs).

[btw: some have argued that Schumpeter envisioned a process in the
economy which Gould later envisioned in nature (Schumpeter died in
1950). The former's "gale of creative destruction" and the latter's
"punctuated equilibrium" contain a number of prima facia similarities.]

> They use 'evolution' to describe processes
> which, while they may involve law-like patterns and trends, will play out
> differently depending upon the contingencies presented by the environment.

More food for my thought.

> 'Development' is almost deterministic. 'Evolution' is more non-deterministic.

In the past there has been a good deal of deterministic thinking in
economics (although Veblen was an exception). The current rage, for
example, is DeSoto's notion that economic development is caused by an
invisible network of laws that turn assets from "dead" into "liquid"
capital (e.g. mortgage a house to raise money for a new venture). If a
poor country creates such a network, then presto, it will be poor no more.

Many economists, however, are dissatisfied with deterministic thinking.
The margins of the profession have long contained anti-determinisms, but
that margin is now moving inward towards the center. This
dissatisfaction with determinism, I believe, is why some researchers are
looking to the non-deterministic processes of Darwinian evolution.

[...]

>
> Analogies are heuristics. They are a good way of generating interesting
> ideas, but they provide no justification for those ideas. The ideas must
> find justification in the logic of the situation that you apply them to.

I agree 100%. However, there are also ways of thinking about this issue
which are not analogies. Examples would include socibiology (Wilson),
evolutionary psychology (Pinker), memetics (Dawkins), and gene-culture
coevolution (Boyd and Richerson). The latter, for example, claim that
"Culture is part of biology". In each of these approaches social
elements are in some way or another extensions of biology.

Another, and different, approach is "universal Darwinism". This approach
claims that the principles of variation, inheritance, and selection can
be treated as abstract tools. Biologists apply these tools to one
problem, economists can apply them to a different problem. The
analytical details will likely be different between these to areas of
study. In this view "Darwinism provides a compelling ontology, it is a
universal metatheory in which specific theories must be nested, and it
is a rich but optional source of analogy."


.

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