About the issue
Publications
Partners
2014 (published: 15.09.2014)
Number 3(18)
Home > Issue > Generalized Darwinism as an Economical Theory
Levit G.S., Hossfeld Uwe , Polatayko S.V. , Lvov A.A.
This article critically analyzes the arguments of the ‘generalized Darwinism’ recently proposed for the analysis of social-economical systems. We argue that ‘generalized Darwinism’ is both restrictive and empty. It is restrictive because it excludes alternative (non-selectionist) evolutionary mechanisms such as orthogenesis, saltationism and mutationism without any examination of their suitability for modeling socio-economic processes and ignoring their important roles in the development of contemporary evolutionary theory. It is empty, because it reduces Darwinism to an abstract triple-principle scheme (variation, selection and inheritance) thus ignoring the actual structure of Darwinism as a complex and dynamic theoretical structure inseparable from a very detailed system of theoretical constraints. Arguing against ‘generalised Darwinism’ we present our vision of the history of evolutionary biology with the help of the ‘hourglass model’ reflecting the internal dynamic of competing theories of evolution.
Read the full article
Keywords: generalised Darwinism, anti-Darwinism, orthogenesis, saltationism, the synthetic theory of evolution (STE), the ‘hourglass model’, the extended Synthesis.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
UDC 575
Generalized Darwinism as an Economical Theory
This article critically analyzes the arguments of the ‘generalized Darwinism’ recently proposed for the analysis of social-economical systems. We argue that ‘generalized Darwinism’ is both restrictive and empty. It is restrictive because it excludes alternative (non-selectionist) evolutionary mechanisms such as orthogenesis, saltationism and mutationism without any examination of their suitability for modeling socio-economic processes and ignoring their important roles in the development of contemporary evolutionary theory. It is empty, because it reduces Darwinism to an abstract triple-principle scheme (variation, selection and inheritance) thus ignoring the actual structure of Darwinism as a complex and dynamic theoretical structure inseparable from a very detailed system of theoretical constraints. Arguing against ‘generalised Darwinism’ we present our vision of the history of evolutionary biology with the help of the ‘hourglass model’ reflecting the internal dynamic of competing theories of evolution.
Read the full article
Keywords: generalised Darwinism, anti-Darwinism, orthogenesis, saltationism, the synthetic theory of evolution (STE), the ‘hourglass model’, the extended Synthesis.