In defence of generalized Darwinism

Abstract

Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities. Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions. Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and upholds that there is no reason to exclude social or economic entities.-1 -

Can Darwinism be “Generalized” and of what use would this be?

“…With their recent manifesto "In defense of Generalized Darwinism" in this journal (Aldrich et al 2008) several prominent scholars have endorsed such an encompassing approach to evolutionary economics. Its tacit presumption is a fundamental homology between evolution in nature and evolution in the economy --"social evolution is Darwinian" as Hodgson and Knudsen (2006a) have put it.…”

Agreeing on generalised Darwinism: a response to Pavel Pelikan

“…There are several steps to the argument -see below. But since Pelikan agrees with us that social evolution is essentially a Darwinian process, we do not have to repeat the additional arguments here that (a) Lamarckism and Darwinism are not rivals, and (b) if social evolution were Lamarckian then it also would have to be Darwinian (Aldrich et al 2008;Knudsen 2006a, 2010b). …”

Hunter-Gatherers in a Howling Wilderness: Farming economic systems for human needs

“…The evolutionary process of generalized Darwinism, in the sense of Aldrich et al (2008), as envisioned by Wallace (2011), involves dynamic interplay between (at least) three information sources representing transmission of corporate heritage, the cognitive response of a corporation to patterns of threat and opportunity, and embedding environment, given that both corporation and environment 'remember', producing serial correlations in time. We suppose it possible to coarse-grain observational measures of those three processes, representing the results in terms of some 'alphabet' of possible states.…”

“…Other approaches to the origin and propagation of such 'shocks' arise more naturally from the generalized Darwinian perspective of Aldrich et al (2008), based on a necessary-conditions application of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis to economic phenomena. Wallace (2010a) has proposed expanding the Modern Synthesis itself by introducing 'The principle of environmental interaction,' i.e., that individuals and groups engage in powerful, often punctuated, dynamic mutual relations with their embedding environments that may include the exchange of heritage material between markedly different organisms.…”

“…Wallace (2010a) has proposed expanding the Modern Synthesis itself by introducing 'The principle of environmental interaction,' i.e., that individuals and groups engage in powerful, often punctuated, dynamic mutual relations with their embedding environments that may include the exchange of heritage material between markedly different organisms. Wallace (2011) applies the expanded model to the generalized Darwinism of Aldrich et al (2008). Escaping the intellectual straightjacket of mathematical population genetics and analogous forms of replicator dynamics -or at least exchanging it for a slightly larger one -the approach characterizes the heritage system of the firm, the cognitive process by which the firm responds to patterns of threat and opportunity, and embedding socioeconomic environment, as interacting information sources constrained by the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory.…”