General selection theory and economic evolution: The Price equation and the replicator/interactor distinction

Knudsen, Thorbj⊘rn

doi:10.1080/13501780410001694109

Cited by 59 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The critique of such arguments by Mesoudi et al is considerably weakened by their neglect of an immense literature in the social sciences, particularly in evolutionary economics (e.g., Nelson & Winter 1982;Young 1998) and organizational ecology (e.g., Hannan & Freeman 1989), where Darwinian themes are central. Their stance is further weakened by its neglect of the recent development of general Darwinian concepts of replication and selection in the theory and philosophy of biology (e.g., Frank 1998;Hull 2001;Knudsen 2004;Price 1995). Even though David Hull's work is mentioned, one of its central messages is neglected: An adequate definition of selection processes where variety is replenished demands consideration of the causal relation between interaction and replication.…”

Section: N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

2006

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We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

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Section: N O T E Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

2006

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“…The basic spirit follows a longstanding tradition of both evolutionary economists [17][18][19][20] and evolutionary population biologists [21][22][23]] to decompose population growth into different metrics of diversity, usually variance and covariance terms (such as done by the famous Price equation). Our equations also decompose growth in a similar manner, but use diversity metrics like entropies and mutual information instead.…”

Section: Evolutionary Economics: Decomposing Growth Descriptivelymentioning

confidence: 99%

The More You Know, the More You Can Grow: An Information Theoretic Approach to Growth in the Information Age

Hilbert

2017

Entropy

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In our information age, information alone has become a driver of social growth. Information is the fuel of "big data" companies, and the decision-making compass of policy makers. Can we quantify how much information leads to how much social growth potential? Information theory is used to show that information (in bits) is effectively a quantifiable ingredient of growth. The article presents a single equation that allows both to describe hands-off natural selection of evolving populations and to optimize population fitness in uncertain environments through intervention. The setup analyzes the communication channel between the growing population and its uncertain environment. The role of information in population growth can be thought of as the optimization of information flow over this (more or less) noisy channel. Optimized growth implies that the population absorbs all communicated environmental structure during evolutionary updating (measured by their mutual information). This is achieved by endogenously adjusting the population structure to the exogenous environmental pattern (through bet-hedging/portfolio management). The setup can be applied to decompose the growth of any discrete population in stationary, stochastic environments (economic, cultural, or biological). Two empirical examples from the information economy reveal inherent trade-offs among the involved information quantities during growth optimization.

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“…On the contrary, he used artificial selection as an exemplar for natural selection. Furthermore, at a high level of abstraction, artificial and natural selection share an identical definition (Hull 1988, Price 1995, Knudsen 2004). …”

Section: Can Darwinism Cope With Intentionality?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why we need a generalized Darwinism, and why generalized Darwinism is not enough

Hodgson

Knudsen

2006

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

258

125

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Complex evolving systems, consisting of populations of varied and replicating entities are found in both nature and human society. There exists no alternative to the core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and inheritance to explain the evolution of such systems. Neither the actual existence of human intentionality nor the hypothetical possibility of Lamarckian acquired character inheritance offers a barrier to the use of Darwinian principles. On the contrary, Darwinism is always required to complete the explanation. However, while Darwinian principles are always necessary to explain complex evolving population systems they are never sufficient on their own.

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General selection theory and economic evolution: The Price equation and the replicator/interactor distinction

Cited by 59 publications

References 29 publications

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

The More You Know, the More You Can Grow: An Information Theoretic Approach to Growth in the Information Age

Why we need a generalized Darwinism, and why generalized Darwinism is not enough

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