Abstract
This chapter first considers how the different approaches of evolutionary economics are able to overcome the difficulties of the neoclassical theory of economics, by applying a Darwinian explanatory model of biological evolution to the economic field. This investigation therefore focuses on different ways of referring to Darwinian thought, especially analogy as well as the application labeled “direct application” by Ulrich Witt. A second section addresses an argument, levelled against this programme, which emphasizes the intentional character of human behavior, and consequently lays stress on the necessity to consider economic evolution as a specific form of evolution, in order to capture the process proper to the economic field. Through an examination of its presuppositions, this objection is finally shown to have actually no bite against this programme.
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Notes
- 1.
Jean Gayon stressed the importance of this sort of transmission. See “Sélection naturelle biologique et sélection naturelle économique: examen philosophique d’une analogie” (1999).
- 2.
It is necessary to note that the natural selection principle applies only to firms and not to “routines”, as far as firms are considered as “interactors” and not as “replicators” in David Hull’s words. See in particular the article to which we refer in the previous footnote. In this respect, routines are analogous to “genes”, thus considered as “replicators´” in the model of biological evolution, while firms are analogous to “organisms”, thus considered as “interactor”. Finally, the market is analogous to the natural environment.
- 3.
The objection levelled by Ulrich Witt has been often used in order to reject the natural selection principle as a guiding principle in the understanding of economic phenomena and, more generally, of cultural phenomena. We refer here to Ulrich Witt’s arguments since he points clearly out the difficulties into which a theory borrowing this principle from the biological theory could run.
- 4.
It goes without saying that, on the one hand, this relationship between the two concepts should be further explained. On the other hand, the Hayekian notion of evolution is still under active debate. In this respect, it is still unclear whether Hayek refers to the Darwinian model of evolution when referring to the model of biological evolution. However, we only aim here at underlining the relationship between the idea of natural selection, considered as a blind mechanism, and the idea of the limits of the agents’ rational abilities.
- 5.
When considering that imitation and learning phenomena may provide insights for the understanding of the apparition and evolution of economic phenomena, one may ask whether the Lamarckian model of biological evolution may, at least as much as the Darwinian one, help account for economic evolution, and more generally cultural evolution. This idea is still under debate. See Geoffrey Hodgson et de Thorbjorn Knudsen, “The Limits of Larmarckism Revisited” in The Journal of Evolutionary Economics, and the online debate http://etss.net/index.php/weblog/booksandreviewsfull/189/
- 6.
It is necessary to note that Witt explicitly referred to the notions of learning and imitation in his 2008 article: “Human creativity, insight, social learning, and imitative capacity have established mechanisms of a high-pace, intra-generational adaptation”. Although Witt highlights this notion to account for adaptation phenomena in economic and cultural fields, he does not point out that the intentionality of human actions as such may prove insufficient to preclude the introduction of the natural selection principle in economics.
- 7.
Special thanks to Philippe Huneman.
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Debray, E. (2015). Evolutionary Economics: A Specific Form of Evolution?. In: Heams, T., Huneman, P., Lecointre, G., Silberstein, M. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9014-7_38
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