Abstract
This is the second of two articles in which I reflect on “generalized Darwinism” as currently discussed in evolutionary economics. In the companion article (Callebaut, Biol Theory 6. doi:10.1007/s13752-013-0086-2, 2011, this issue) I approached evolutionary economics from the naturalistic perspectives of evolutionary epistemology and the philosophy of biology, contrasted evolutionary economists’ cautious generalizations of Darwinism with “imperialistic” proposals to unify the behavioral sciences, and discussed the continued resistance to biological ideas in the social sciences. Here I assess Generalized Darwinism as propounded by Geoffrey Hodgson, Thorbjørn Knudsen, and others, concentrating on the roles of theory and model building in science (and the roles of analogy and metaphor therein), generative replication, and the relation between selection and self-organization. I then point to advances in current biology that promise to be more fruitful as sources of inspiration for evolutionary economics than the project to generalize Darwinism in its current, “hardened Modern Synthesis” form; and I draw some conclusions.
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Notes
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Konrad Lorenz (1974) recalled that as a student of the comparative anatomist and embryologist Ferdinand Hochstetter he had the benefit of a very thorough instruction in the methodological procedure of distinguishing similarities caused by common descent from those due to parallel adaptation. Only much later in life he realized that in human cultural evolution, the interaction between homologies and analogies “was very much the same as in the phylogeny of species and that it posed very much the same problems” (p. 231). Or, to take another example: Campbell (1997, p. 6) relates “the many independent discoveries” of the notion, usually associated with Lorenz, that the a priori categories of perception and intuition result from biological evolution: Darwin (in his notebooks), Spencer, James, Vaihinger, von Bertalanffy, “and a hundred others.”
Contrary to Simon’s older behavioral theory of organizations, behavioral economics à la Kahneman lacks an evolutionary perspective. Witt (2011, this issue) points out that this is rather surprising “given that important parts of the behavioral repertoire of animals and presumably also of humans are innate, i.e., develop as an expression of their genes.” I will argue below that such a linear view of development is outdated.
Epigenetic phenomena at the level of the structure and function of the gene such as methylation and imprinting of gene sequences, sometimes referred to as the “phenotype” of the gene, likewise blur the distinction between genotype and phenotype (Hallgrímsson and Hall 2011, p. 1).
Self-reproducing systems have been thought possible only if they can store information about themselves, which would require them to simplify their “experiences” by means of a language such as the genetic code that maintains the system against entropy. “At first, replication occurs in a relatively simple fashion, and then becomes more complicated as the gap between genotype and phenotype emerges. The function of the genotype is supposed to be one of storing information for the phenotype so that the negentropic commitment (in the form of complexity) represented by the phenotype can be somewhat minimized by allowing lower negentropic factors (chemical bonding, for example) to be at the service of replication. As a result of the economy brought about by self-simplification of the phenotype in the genotype, higher phenotypic levels of complexity … then become possible” (Esposito 1975, p. 136; my italics). Maybe the idea of an energetic/informational self-simplification of the phenotype in the genotype could be extended fruitfully to discussions of levels and their interrelations, while sidestepping the pitfalls of the replicator/interactor formalism. Notice that this idea allows for recursion (“genotypes within genotypes”); cf. also note 3.
Despite a century-old tradition that had “yielded tantalizing insights into the evolution of organismal form” (Pigliucci and Müller 2010, p. 8), developmental biology (formerly embryology) was not incorporated in the Modern Synthesis, and the importance of proximate as opposed to ultimate causation continues to be downplayed by evolutionists and “their” philosophers (as discussed in Callebaut et al. 2007; Callebaut 2009a); but see Müller (2005); Gilbert and Epel (2009); Laland et al. (2011).
The existence of many departments of “ecology and evolutionary biology” notwithstanding, ecology, which missed out on the Modern Synthesis, has “kept developing with little to add to, or import from, evolutionary biology” (Pigliucci and Müller 2010, p. 8). Many ideas in ecology have more in common with economics than with anything in contemporary biology (Callebaut 2010, p. 468).
“In view of the strong anti-theoretical stance of most of biology, it is remarkable that, in the absence of much evidence, the concept of natural selection of units other than the individual is so widely accepted” (Lewontin 1970, p. 2).
In a way, facts are a lot like cows: if you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away (Dorothy Sayers, Clouds of Witness, 1926)!
In a letter to Henry Fawcett of 18 September 1861 (quoted in Gould 1992), Darwin already wrote: “About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorize; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that any-one should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!”
Numerous models in economics (and biology), including game theoretical ones, explore “the logical or empirical implications of sets of constraints and interactions without application to carefully curated data sets” (Krakauer et al. 2011, p. 271).
On the other hand, Hodgson and Knudsen’s “odd focus on increasing complexity” (Gers 2012, p. 599) already leaves its mark at this highest level.
On Vromen’s (2007, p. 19) hypothetical interpretation, which I endorse on the basis of my reading of subsequent publications by Hodgson and Knudsen (e.g., 2011, this issue), GD is tendentially being sized down from a “selection-type theory” to “something like population thinking.” If you oppose this kind of hypothetical reasoning, consider the “epicycle upon epicycle” argument instead.
If the basic explanatory form in science is—revisable—theory rather than law, a view that most evolutionary economists adhere to, then retroduction not induction should be the main form of scientific validation (McMullin 1983, p. 14). What Nelson (2011, this issue) has in mind is that theorizing should proceed from paying close attention to the empirical phenomena, and then coming to a plausible explanation that is consistent with other things known empirically.
The “evolutionary contingency thesis” states that all generalizations about the living world are either of a mathematical, physical, or chemical nature, or distinctively biological, in which case they describe contingent outcomes of evolution (Beatty 1995, pp. 46–47).
François Jacob, who coined the metaphor of bricolage, argued for a grounding of biology in economics or engineering (Krakauer et al. 2011, p. 270).
Even if one believes that “for inheritance to exist, there has to be some way of reliably producing similarity (along some dimension) between relatives across generations,” which I reject as far as the sheer “logic” of evolution à la Lewontin is concerned, “this mechanism need not involve an underlying population of entities (like genes) that are copied in the wholesale and direct sense associated with the (Dawkins-Hull) concept of a replicator” (Godfrey-Smith 2001, p. 538). To avoid misunderstanding, let me add that I personally don’t think Ghiselin and Hull have had the last word on similarity (Callebaut 2010, p. 471).
Thus Wimsatt (2006) adds two more requirements to Lewontin’s three: (4) “developmental trajectories show sequential dependencies” (generativity), and (5) “systemic elements differ in downstream consequences and magnitude of effect” (differential generative entrenchment). These he takes to provide “a minimal but absolutely general account of development” that is satisfied by all nontrivial evolutionary systems.
In a similar vein, McCarthy (2004, p. 139) adds “struggle” to variation, selection, and retention as a process underpinning the evolution of organizations. For Ross (2006, p. 31), “in the absence of competition for resources, there would be no selection, and all biological change would be random”—a claim that may have to be reconsidered in the light of EvoDevo (McGhee 2011) and niche construction theory.
A non-Malthusian stance similar to Lewontin’s is sketched in Simon (1983): in principle, niche construction allows populations to evolve indefinitely while avoiding encounters “red in tooth and claw” (Callebaut 2007). To avoid any possible misunderstanding: I am considering only the “logic” of evolution here (cf. Weiss et al. 2011).
Hodgson and Knudsen (2010, Section 5.5.) have had little to say about what fitness amounts to in the cultural domain beyond “the propensity of a social replicator (such as a habit or routine) with a particular feature to produce copies and increase the frequency of similar replicators in a population.”
Self-reflecting on his theory of group-level cultural adaptations, Campbell (1997, p. 23) wrote: “we must posit that the individually adaptive products are so valuable that a general tendency toward blind comformity has a net individual inclusive fitness advantage.” He admitted that this is “one of the most vulnerable parts” of his theory. Given the persistent difficulties with defining fitness in both biological and cultural contexts (Lennox 2008; McCarthy 2004; Stearns 1976; see also Peacock 2011), it may be worthwhile thinking about a formalization of GD that can dispense with this notion (David Hull, personal communication, 1 December 2000) of Victorian origin (Callebaut 2010, p. 469).
"We are just starting to appreciate the full range of [prokaryotic organisms’] mechanisms for evolutionary change.… [G]iven the fascinating range of mechanisms of recombination in prokaryotes, processes that regulate evolutionary change in this wide array of organisms remain a fertile field of inquiry. In fact, we need to move very quickly to keep up with the speed with which microorganisms are changing. Whether we like it or not, these smallest of organisms have already inherited the earth" (Rita Colwell, quoted in Kane 2001, p. 468).
(1) NS and SO are unrelated; (2) SO is auxiliary to NS; (3) SO constrains NS, which drives evolution; (4) NS constrains SO, which drives evolution; (5) NS instantiates SO; (6) NS generates SO; (7) NS and SO are aspects of a single process.
Only recently has philosophy of science begun to recover from the objectivist illusions of the logical positivists, as indicated in the shift away from “explanation” toward an emphasis on “understanding” (de Regt et al. 2009).
I discuss the philosophical background to Griesemer’s perspectivism at some length in Callebaut (2012).
Sterelny (2006) argues that human lifeways depend on “cognitive capital” that has been built over many generations, producing an adaptive fit between human agents and their environments that is the result of “hidden-hand,” evolutionary mechanisms.
Emergence refers to phenomena outside the scope of variation, in particular to the modes of origination, innovation and novelty in phenotypic evolution (Müller 2007). On Müller’s view, a “theory of emergence” complements the theory of adaptation through its account for the appearance of phenotypic novelties in evolution.
The “evolutionary developmental economics” proposed by Pelikan (2011) as an alternative to HKGD draws on a version of EvoDevo that is “less concerned with replication of genes than with genomic instructing of development of organisms.” The envisaged generalization of development “as instructed self-organizing with inputs from environments, and evolution as experimental search for instructions making the development successful” seems to me a first step in the right direction. Pelikan has moved up one step on the ladder of life, from the single gene to the genome; may more steps follow soon!
Hull et al. (2001), reflecting on their comparison of selection processes in evolutionary biology, immunology, and operant behavior, also concluded that the organism plays a crucial role in all three cases.
“More things in Heaven and Earth,” the subtitle of this article, is a tribute to Gould (2001b).
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Acknowledgments
The ideas developed in this article were presented and discussed at the 22nd Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology, “Models of Man for Evolutionary Economics,” KLI, Altenberg, September 2009; in a talk at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et Techniques (IHPST), Paris, March 2011; in a session on “Darwin’s Conjecture: Discussing the Ontological Foundations of Evolutionary Economics” at the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE) Conference on Schumpeter’s Heritage, “The Evolution of the Theory of Evolution,” Vienna, October 2011; and at the Ringberg Symposium, “Biological Determinants and Contingencies of Economic Behavior—Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, and Economics,” Tegernsee, August 2012. I would like to thank my audiences at these occasions, and in particular Kurt Dopfer, Jean Gayon, Geoff Hodgson, Michael Ghiselin, Dick Nelson, Jan-Willem Stoelhorst, Jack Vromen, Manuel Wäckerle, David Sloan Wilson, and Ulrich Witt, for very useful feedback. Error clause as usual.
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Callebaut, W. Beyond Generalized Darwinism. II. More Things in Heaven and Earth. Biol Theory 6, 351–365 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-013-0087-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-013-0087-1