Categories

Anthropology

Boyd, Robert and Peter Richerson. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Durham, William H. (1991). Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. Stanford, Stanford University Press.

Sahlins, Marshall D. and Elman Rogers S. (editors). (1960). Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.

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Business and Economic History

Chandler, Alfred D. (1990). Scale and Scope. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Epstein, Stephan R. (1998). Craft Guilds, Apprenticeship and Technological Change in Preindustrial Europe The Journal of Economic History, 58, (684-713). Although not the central topic in the paper, this excellent paper shows that Europe became the center of economic growth because the diversity of and competition between regions and political units acted as an insurance policy against inertia. When one region would decline in its innovative ability, another region would take over the leadership role within Europe.

John, Richard R. (1997). Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr’s “The Visible Hand” after Twenty Years Business History Review, 71 (Summer), (151-206). Click on title for full text of the article on eh.net.

Murmann, Johann Peter (2003). Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institution. New York, Cambridge University Press.

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Economics

Hayek, Freidrich (1945). The Use of Knowledge in Society. American Economic Review, XXXV, (519-30).

Hodgson, Geoffrey Martin (editor) (1998). The Foundations of Evolutionary Economics, 1890-1973. Northampton, Mass, Edward Elgar. This two volume collection is extremely useful because it pulls together key writings in evolutionary economics and provides commentaries. Click here for a table of contents. In his introductory essay Hodgson gives a very good summary of the history of evolutionary thought in economics.

Hodgson, Geoffrey Martin (2000). Evolution and Institutions: On Evolutionary Economics and the Evolution of Economics. Northampton, Mass, Edward Elgar. Reviewed by Anne Mayhew on eh.net.

Writings of David Hume (web site has searchable electronic copies of many of his major works)

Krugman, Paul (1996). What Economists Can Learn from Evolutionary Theorists. Web Publication. A talk given to the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy.

Metcalfe, Stanley and Michael Gibbons (1989). Technology, Variety, and Organization: An Systematic Perspective on the Competitive Process Research on Technological Innovations, Management and Policy, JAI Press, (153-193). This is a spectacular paper that anyone interested in evolutionary economics should read.

Metcalfe, J. Stanley Evolutionary economics and creative destruction. London and New York, Routledge. This is an excellent introcution to Evolutionary Economics.

Murmann, Johann Peter (2003). Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institution. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Nelson, Richard R. and Sidney G. Winter (1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. This is the seminal work in evolutionary economics and should be the starting point for anyone who wants to get acquainted with evolutionary economics.

Writings of Schumpeter (Bibliography in German)

Writings of Adam Smith (Web site has searchable electronic copies of many of his major works.)

Vromen, Jack J (1995). Economic Evolution: An Enquiry into the Foundations of New Institutional Economics. London and New York, Routledge. This is an superb inquiry into the conceptual foundation of evolutionary economics.

Readings for Complex Adaptive Systems and Agent-Based Computational Economics

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General History

Russell, Edmund (2003). Evolutionary History: Prospectus for a New Field Environmental History, 8, (61 pars).

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History of Evolutionary Thought

Depew, David J. and Bruce H. Weber (1995). Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. Keywords: Evolution (Biology), Philosophy, History. The books presents a very good overview of the history of evolutionary theory with particular emphasis on Darwin's theory of natural selection. It is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in a philosophically-informed history of evolutionary though.

Hodgson, Geoffrey M. & Torbjorn Knudsen (2010). Darwin’s Conjecture. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. In the introductory chapter the authors provide an excellent intellectual history of how Darwin was received in the social sciences over the past 150 years. Jack Vromen provides an excellent review of the book.

Sanderson, Stephen K (1990). Social Evolutionism: A Critical History. Cambridge, Mass. USA, Blackwell. Keywords: Social evolution

Museum of Paleontology (UC Berkeley): Exhibit on the History of Evolutionary Thought

Principia Cybernetica Web: Links in the History of Evolution

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Law

Cooter, Robert D. and Daniel L. Rubinfeld (1989). “Economic Analysis of Legal Disputes and Their Resolution.” Journal of Economic Literature , XXVII , (1067-1097). (requires access to JSTOR; the evolutionary aspect of the paper is in section D, starting on page 1091)

Elliot, E. Donald (1985). “The Evolutionary Tradition in Jurisprudence.” Columbia Law Review , 85, (38-94).

Hayek, Friedrich A (1973). Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume I: Rules and Order. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Reasonable people can disagree with the conclusions that Hayek draws from his evolutionary views of society. But resonable people will agree that Hayek was a great scholar. This book is an intellectual tour the four de force and deserves to be on the bookshelf of everyone who is interested in the relationship between law and economics.

Landes, William M. and Richard A. Posner (1987). The Economic Structure of Tort Law. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. For Review of the book by J. M. Balkin, click here

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Management and Organization Theory

Baum, Joel A. C. and Bill McKelvey, Eds (1999). Variations in Organization Science: In Honor of Donald T. Campbell. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage Publications. Click here for a table of contents. This is a very valuable collection of papers on the evolutionary research program in management. The introductory essay by Baum and McKelvey gives a nice overview of evolutionary thought management and organization theory and how Campbell's ideas have influenced management and organization theory scholars.

Baum, Joel A. C. and Jitendra V. Singh, Eds (1994). The Evolutionary Dynamics of Organizations. New York, Oxford University Press. This is a valuable collection of essays by leading evolutionary scholars in management and organization theory.

Fujimoto, Takahiro (1999). The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota. New York, Oxford University Press. This is a specatular book, providing rich detail on how the Toyota system evolved. Anyone interested in developing evolutionary theories of individual firms will find this book extremely valuable.

McKelvey, Bill (1982). Organizational Systematics: Taxonomy, Evolution and Classification. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Murmann, Johann Peter (2003). Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institution. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Tushman, Michael L. and Elaine Romanelli (1985). Organizational Evolution: A Metamorphosis Model of Convergence and Reorientation. Research in Organi. Greenwich, CT, Jai Press 7: 171-222.

Weick, Karl E (1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing. Reading, Mass, Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

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Political Science

Evolutionary World Politics Web

Axelrod, Robert M (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York, Basic Books. Keywords: Cooperativenes, Games of strategy (Mathematics), Conflict management, Egoism, Consensus, Social interaction. This is the classic game-theoretic treatment of the evolution of cooperation.

Axelrod, Robert M (1997). The Complexity of Cooperation: Agent-based Models of Competition and Collaboration. Princeton, N.J, Princeton University Press. Keywords: Cooperativeness, Competition, Conflict management, Adaptability (Psychology), Adjustment (Psychology), Computational complexity, Social systems Computer simulation.

Thayer, Bradley A. (2004). Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict. Lexington, University Press of Kentucky. 250,000 generations of human beings lived as hunters and gatherers and only for 8 generations we have lived in industrial societies. The book argues that out political instincts have been shaped by the requirements of hunter gatherer societies, which has implications how political actors behave today. For a review of book to to: http://jpm.li/53

Thompson, William (2001). Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics. New York, Routledge. Keywords: Political Science › International Relations › History & Theory Editors Note: In economics profits provide a consistent selection mechanism. It is less clear that "elections" are are consistent selection mechanism.

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Psychology

Campbell, D. T (1960). “Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Thought Processes.” Psychological Review, 67:, (380-400).

Donald, Merlin (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press. Keywords: Cognition and culture, Neuropsychology, Cognition, Intellect History

Plotkin, Henry (1997). Evolution in Mind: An Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Principia Cybernetica Web: Links in Evolutionary Psychology

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Sociology

Aldrich, Howard E (1979). Organizations and Environments. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall.

Hannan, M. and J. Freeman (1989). Organizational Ecology. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Hawley, Amos (1950). Human Ecology: Theory of Community Structure. New York, Ronald Press.

Langton, John (1984). “The Ecological Theory of Bureaucracy: The Case of Josiah Wedgwood and the British Pottery Industry. Administrative Science Quarterly , 29, (330-354). This is a spectacular paper spelling out the causal mechanisms that would explain the rise of bureaucracy in modern societies. Max Weber has found his evolutionary theorist in John Langton.

Sanderson, Stephen K (1995). Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development. Cambridge, Mass, Blackwell. Keywords: Social evolution, Economic anthropology, Capitalism.

Tilly, Charles (1984). Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York, Russel Sage Foundation.

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Technology

Arthur, Brian (1998). Thoughts on Inreasing Returns, Technological Lock-in, and Path-Dependence Interview published in PreText Magazine, . This is a very good introduction to the issues. [For oppoising views see Liebowitz here.]

Balwin, Carliss and Kim Clark (2000). Design Rules, Vol.1: The Power of Modularity. Cambridge, MIT Press. This is the single most valuable book connecting technological evolution and industrial change. It's strength derives from the deep empirical knowledge how computer technology developed and the innovative use of design and finance theory to understand how innovative activity shifts over time with profound implications for where value is created in the industrial landscape.

Basalla, George (1988). The Evolution of Technology. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Constant, Edward W. T. II (1980). The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Murmann, Johann Peter (2003). Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institution. New York, Cambridge University Press.

Petroski, H (1992). The Evolution of Useful Things. New York, Alfred Knopf.

Vincenti, Walter (1990). What Engineers Know and How They Know It. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. This is the single most valuable book on technological evolution. It formulates an evolutionary epistemology of how engineers knowledge grows.

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Other Fields

Linguistics

Croft, William (2000). Explaining Language Change: An Evolutionary Approach. Harlow, Essex: Longman. This book develops and account of language change using modern evolutionary ideas in the tradition of Hull and others. It is a very good starting point getting an up-to date overview of evolutionary arguments in linguistics.

Naumann, Bernd, Frans Plank and Gottfried Hofbauer, Eds (1992). Language and Earth: Effective Affinities between the Emerging Sciences of Linguistics and Geology. Philadelphia, J. Benjamins Publ. Co. This edited volume contains 17 essays that compare the intellectual developments in linguistics and geology in the 19th century

Schleicher, August ((1983). [1850]). Die Sprachen Europas in Systematischer ?úbersicht: Linguistische Untersuchungen. With a new introdu. Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publ. Co. Provides an overview of the early connections between evolutionary thought in linguistics and biology before Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, 1859.

Schleicher, August, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel and W. H. I. Bleek ((1983). [1863, 1865, 1867]). Linguistics and Evolutionary Theory: Three Essays. With an introduction by J. Peter Maher. Philadelphia, J. Benjamins. Three essays by Schleicher, Bleek and Haeckel protray the early reactions in linguistics to the ideas of Darwin.

Senghas, Ann , Sotaro Kita, and Asli Özyürek (2004). Children Creating Core Properties of Language: Evidence from an Emerging Sign Language in Nicaragua Science, Vol. 305, (1779-1782). This article provides important new evidence on language development, analyzing an amazing natural experiment in Nicaragua where deaf children created a new sign language.

Taub, Liba (1993). “Evolutionary Ideas and ‘Empirical’ Methods: The Analogy Between Language and Species in the Works o British Journal for the History of Science, 26, (171-193).

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Natural Sciences

Darwin, Charles ((1964). [1859]). On the Origin of Species. A Facsimile of the First Edition. Cambridge, Harvard University Press.

Eldredge, Niles (1985). Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern Evolutionary Thought. New York, Oxford University Press.

Eldredge, Niles (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory. New York, John Wiley & Sons. The author lays out forcefully the debate between reductionists who strive to reduce all biological phenomena to competition between genes for reproductive success (the so-called ultra-Darwinians) and non-reductionists who argue that each level in the hierarchical organization of life should be studied in its own right. Another fundamental issue in the debate is whether evolution is gradual or punctuated by radical discontinuities.

Eldredge, Niles (1999). The Pattern of Evolution. New York, W. H. Freeman and Company.

Gould, Steven Jay (1977). Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. New York, W. W. Norton & Company.

Gould, Steven Jay (1980). The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York, W. W. Norton & Company.

Gould, Steven J. and Niles Eldredge (1977). “Punctuated Equilibria: the Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered.” Paleobiology, 3, (115-151).

A History of Evolutionary Biology Web Site

Sober, Elliot, Ed (1994). Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. A Bradford Book. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. This edited volume contains a superb collection of essays by leading biologists and philosopers of science

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Other General Bibliographies on the Web

CogWeb Bibliography

Essentials of Evolutionary Thought in the Social Sciences (An annotated bibliography published on the Evolutionary World Politics web. )

KLI Theory Lab on Evolution and Cognition. (A searchable database of literature related to the wider domain of evolution and cognition published by the Konrad Lorenz Institute. )

Organizational Ecology Literature. (A searchable database of literature related to organizational ecology literature hosted by Glenn Carroll and Mike Hannan. )

SELECTION THEORY BIBLIOGRAPHY (by Gary A. Cziko and Donald T. Campbell (1916-1996) )

Socio.Ch Online Publications on Social and Cultural Evolution

Evolutionary Models in Social Science

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Philosophy

Evolutionary Epistemology Entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Ayala, Francisco Jose and Theodosius G. Dobzhansky (1974). Studies in Philosophy of Biology: Reduction and Related Problems. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press. The volume contains excellent chapters ob Donald T. Campbell and Karl Popper and others.

Dennett, Daniel Clement (1995). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. Simon & Schuster. Keywords: Natural selection, Philosophy of Biological Evolution, Philosophy of Human Evolution.

Depew, David J. and Bruce H. Weber (1995). Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. Keywords: Evolution (Biology), Philosophy, History. The books presents a very good overview of the history of evolutionary theory with particular emphasis on Darwin's theory of natural selection. It is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in a philosophically-informed history of evolutionary though.

Hahlweg, Kai and C. A. Hooker (editors) (1989). Issues in Evolutionary Epistemology. Albany, State University of New York. The book contains excellent chapters by Donald Campbell, Ron Amundson and others.

Hull, David L (1973). Darwin and his Critics; The Reception of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press.

Hull, David L (1988). Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is the most widely read and cited book in the philosophy and sociology of science. If you want an philosophical foundation for an evolutionary view, this is the book you should read and not Kuhn. Hull delivers not only a philosophical foundation for evolutionary theories in the social sciences, but he also provides a wonderful case study of how a school of thought in the world of biological taxonomy won the competition among alternative approaches.

Hull, David L (1989). The Metaphysics of Evolution. Albany, State University of New York Press.

Sober, Elliot (1984). The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press. Keywords: Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Evolution, Philosophy of Biological Evolution.

Toulmin, Stephen E. (1972). Human understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Wilson, Edward O (1998). The Biological Basis of Morality Atlantic Monthly, April Issue, . The famous biologist ventures into moral philosophy.

Principia Cybernetica Web: Links in Evolutionary Philosophy and Theory

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Software Tools

TDA (Transition Data Analysis) Software

Connected Mathematics: Making Sense of Complex Phenomena Through Building Computational Models. (Here you download for free the NetLogo tool that will run on any computer platform. The software allows you to model complex systems composed of interacting individuals. )

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