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

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Abstract

It has been suggested that, by generalizing Darwinian principles, a common foundation can be derived for all scientific disciplines dealing with evolutionary processes, especially for evolutionary economics. We show, however, that in the development of evolutionary biology, the abstract principles of so-called “Generalized Darwinism” have not been crucial for distinguishing Darwinian from non-Darwinian approaches and, hence, cannot be considered genuinely Darwinian. Moreover, we wonder what can be gained by invoking the abstract principles of Generalized Darwinism given that they do not suffice to substantiate an explanation of actual evolutionary processes. To that end, specific hypotheses are required. They neither follow from the suggested abstract principles, nor are they more easily found on that basis. Accordingly, we find little evidence in the literature for the claim that generalized Darwinian principles enhance the explanatory power of an evolutionary approach to economics.

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Notes

  1. For example, Weismann (1893) claimed that the ultimate source of variation is always the effect of external influence. Rejecting Lamarckian mechanisms at the level of soma, he championed what Winther (2001) called “inheritance of acquired germ-plasm variations”.

  2. Since Haeckel’s name became a synonym for Darwinism among continental scholars, his interpretation – encouraged by Darwin himself – can be taken as representative for what “Darwinism” meant at these early times. It also reflects, of course, the major problems that classical Darwinism faced.

  3. “I received a few days ago a sheet of your new work, & have read it with great interest. You confer on my book, the ‘Origin of Species’, the most magnificent eulogium which it has ever received, & I am most truly gratified, but I fear if this part of your work is ever criticized, your reviewer will say that you have spoken much too strongly.” Letter 5193 - Darwin to Haeckel, 18 Aug [1866] (Darwin’s Correspondence Project).

  4. The concept of orthogenesis is often combined with selectionism and/or inheritance of acquired characteristics. In contrast to the claim that natural selection operates on a very copious or even inexhaustible material generated by an unconstrained variation, orthogenesis holds that variation is strongly constrained and proceeds only in one out of many potential directions within each phylogenetic line.

  5. The differences related in particular to the explanation of the exact mechanism of inheritance and of whether and how heritable features can be acquired. Of the two major neo-Lamarckian approaches, the first approach—developed by Lamarck himself—claimed that an organ adapts or loses its adaptive value according to its actual functional value in everyday life. (Favorite example: the blindness of cave animals.) The second approach favored the idea of a direct environmental effect on the organism’s heredity, an approach known as Geoffroyism.

  6. Although they often used an own terminology, many scientists contributed to the orthogenetic approach. Some (like Berg 1926) coupled the concept of orthogenesis with saltationism and the idea of direct environmental impact on the organism’s heredity (i.e. “Geoffroyism”, see Levit and Hossfeld 2005).

  7. Finally, there existed the theoretical movement of old-Darwinism (as opposed to neo-Darwinism). Insisting on Darwin’s original approach, it combined neo-Lamarckism, orthogenesis, mutationism, and selectionism. By that time, the proponents of old-Darwinism were trying to figure out the exact role of all these mechanisms in the evolutionary process. See Levit and Hossfeld (2006) for details.

  8. See Mayr (1982, p. 607) and Levit et al. (2008b).

  9. Contemporary mainstream “Darwinism” also reflects on whether, and to what extent, elements of rivaling approaches could play a role within an expanded synthetic theory. For instance, there is a debate revolving around the role of developmental and evolutionary constraints (e.g., Wimsatt and Schank 1988) which reminds one of the idea of orthogenesis. Neo-Lamarckian ideas are reconsidered in view of the debate concerning epigenetic phenomena (Jablonka and Lamb 2006). There is still a principle difference, though, between neo-Lamarckian soft inheritance and epigenetics so that the selectionist foundations of the theory are not compromised. See Haig (2007) and Gilbert (Gilbert and Epel 2009, p. 449). Also, mutationist-saltationist conjectures draw new attention among geneticists.

  10. Nor does space suffice here to address the recent contributions of philosophers of biology to the debate between selectionist and evolutionary developmentalists. See for example Sober (1994), Callebaut and Rasskin-Gutman (2005), Samson and Brandon (2007).

  11. On a priori grounds, there is no reason to expect that a bottom-up research strategy would indeed lead to the three principles suggested by Generalized Darwinism or any other ones discussed in evolutionary biology such as the principle of orthogenesis. Indeed, a glance at works in economics that may be considered exemplars of a bottom-up strategy points at a large variety of principles that depend on the context and cannot easily be generalized. See, for instance, Penrose (1953) for the firm context, Klepper (1997) for the industry context, Witt (2001) for the context of consumption, Metcalfe et al. (2006) for that of economic growth, and Richerson and Boyd (2005) or North et al. (2009) for the context of institutions.

  12. Stoelhorst draws a different conclusion. He suggests specifying the explanandum in terms of an abstract notion of evolution as a “process of change that leads to adaptive complexity” (ibid. p. 347). This is again a notion distilled from evolutionary biology by isolating abstraction. Stoelhorst does not point out in what kind of economic processes “adaptive complexity” could figure as explanandum.

  13. Examples that are given for pairings of interactors vs. replicators are, among others, {organizations vs. routines/habits/genes}, {human groups vs. habits/genes}, {individuals vs. habits/genes}, and {scientific institutions vs. scientific/technological knowledge}, {states vs. laws}, {families/tribes vs. customs}, see ibid. Table 7.2 and Table 8.1.

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Acknowledgements

Support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ho 2143, 9–1) for Hossfeld and Levit’s research on the history of evolutionary biology is gratefully acknowledged. The authors also wish to thank the Situating Science: Works in Progress discussion round at the University of King’s College, Halifax (Levit) and G.Hodgson, J.-W. Stoelhorst, and Jack Vromen for inspiring discussions on the controversy (Witt).

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  1. University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada

    Georgy S. Levit

  2. AG Biodidactics, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany

    Georgy S. Levit & Uwe Hossfeld

  3. Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany

    Ulrich Witt

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  1. Georgy S. Levit
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  3. Ulrich Witt
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Correspondence to Ulrich Witt.

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Levit, G.S., Hossfeld, U. & Witt, U. Can Darwinism be “Generalized” and of what use would this be?. J Evol Econ 21, 545–562 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-011-0235-3

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