Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 A Field Guide to Recent Species of Naturalism
- 2 Naturalistic Epistemology for Eliminative Materialists
- 3 Limits to Biological Knowledge
- 4 Reductionism Redux: Computing the Embryo
- 5 What Happens to Genetics When Holism Runs Amok?
- 6 The Biological Justification of Ethics: A Best-Case Scenario
- 7 Moral Realism and Social Science
- 8 Contractarianism and the “Trolley” Problem
- 9 Does Evolutionary Theory Give Comfort or Inspiration to Economics?
- 10 The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments: Some Considerations
- 11 Research Tactics and Economic Strategies: The Case of the Human Genome Project
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Does Evolutionary Theory Give Comfort or Inspiration to Economics?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 A Field Guide to Recent Species of Naturalism
- 2 Naturalistic Epistemology for Eliminative Materialists
- 3 Limits to Biological Knowledge
- 4 Reductionism Redux: Computing the Embryo
- 5 What Happens to Genetics When Holism Runs Amok?
- 6 The Biological Justification of Ethics: A Best-Case Scenario
- 7 Moral Realism and Social Science
- 8 Contractarianism and the “Trolley” Problem
- 9 Does Evolutionary Theory Give Comfort or Inspiration to Economics?
- 10 The Political Philosophy of Biological Endowments: Some Considerations
- 11 Research Tactics and Economic Strategies: The Case of the Human Genome Project
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
To some economists, evolutionary theory looks like a tempting cure for what ails their subject. To others, it looks like part of a powerful defense of the status quo in economic theory. I think that Darwinian theory is a remarkably inappropriate model, metaphor, inspiration, or theoretical framework for economic theory. The theory of natural selection shares few of its strengths and most of its weaknesses with neoclassical theory, and provides no help in any attempt to frame more powerful alternatives to that theory. In this chapter, I explain why this is so.
I begin with a sketch of the theory of natural selection, some of its strengths and some of its weaknesses. Then I consider how the theory might be supposed to play a role in the improvement of our understanding of economic processes. I conclude with a brief illustration of the problems of instantiating a theory from one domain in another quite different one, employing the most extensive of attempts to develop an evolutionary theory in economics. My pessimistic conclusions reflect a concern shared with economists who have sought comfort or inspiration from biological theory. The concern is to vindicate received theory or to underwrite new theory against a reasonable standard of predictive success. Few of these economists have noticed what the opponents of such a standard for economic theory have seen, that evolutionary theory is itself bereft of strong predictive power (see McCloskey 1985, p. 15).
Two things to note and set aside at the outset are the historical influence that economic science has had over evolutionary theory from before Darwin to the present day, and the profit that biologists have taken in recent years from developments in economic theory.
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- Darwinism in Philosophy, Social Science and Policy , pp. 172 - 194Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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