Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences
Latest notes and announcements from the field
Little Science and Lots of Faith. H. Allen Orr set out to investigate how much science is behind the ‘intelligent design’ movement. He studied all the major works and an interviewed the key players. Read his interesting report in The…
Read more →Richard Nelson reviews (April 27, 2005) Richerson and Boyd's Not by Genes Alone, a new book on the evolution of culture. The authors accepted our invitation to respond to Nelson's review. Registered users etss.net can post their own comments on the book…
Read more →The Jones Center of the Wharton School has posted an informative working paper by Sid Winter. In Developoing an Evolutionary Theory for Economics and Management Winter provides an illmuninating discussion of the intellectual origins and problems encountered in his quest…
Read more →Johann Peter Murmann compares the development of the synthetic dye industry in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States through the lenses of evolutionary theory. As Murmann demonstrates, a complex coevolutionary process linking firms, technology, and national institutions resulted in very different…
Read more →This volume contains 20 of Ulrich Witt's essays on evolutionary economics written between 1985 and 2001. Some of the issues he addresses include the biological foundations of economic behavior, the dissemination of new industrial technologies under network externalities, and the application of…
Read more →Environmental History: Prospectus for a New Field. Edmund Russel has written an interesting essay, calling for an evolutionary view of environmental history.
Read more →In June 2004, Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjorn Knudsen circulated a paper under a title of The Limits of Larmarckism Revisited. What followed was a very interesting debate provoked by a response from Richard Nelson. Geoffrey Hodgson, Thorbjorn Knudsen, John van Wyhe, Marion…
Read more →Important New Evidence on Language Development. Science magazine (Vol. 305, pp. 1779-1782) published the analysis of an amazing natural experiment in Nicaragua where deaf children created a new sign language. Summary: Although the findings are consistent with both directions of…
Read more →Stanley Metcalfy has composed a wonderful review essay of John Ziman’s Technological Innnovation as an Evolutionary Process. Read it here.
Read more →Timur Kuran has written a fascinating paper on Why the Middle East is economically underdeveloped. Anyone interested in social evolution will find this timely paper worth reading. Download Paper
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