Nelson Universal darwinism and evolutionary social science

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Universal Darwinism and evolutionary social science
RICHARD R. NELSON
Columbia Earth Institute, Columbia University, Hogan Hall, 2910, Broadway, New York, NY 10024,
USA (e-mail: rrn2@columbia.edu; phone: 212 854 8720)
Received 15 February 2005; accepted in revised form 12 August 2005
Key words: Cultural change, Evolution, Social science research, Universal Darwinism
Abstract. Save for Anthropologists, few social scientists have been among the participants in the
discussions about the appropriate structure of a ‘Universal Darwinism’. Yet evolutionary theo-
rizing about cultural, social, and economic phenomena has a long tradition, going back well before
Darwin. And over the past quarter century significant literatures have grown up concerned with the
processes of change operating on science, technology, business organization and practice, and
economic change more broadly, that are explicitly evolutionary in theoretical orientation. In each
of these fields of study, the broad proposition put forth by Darwin that change proceeds through a
process involving variation, systematic selection, renewed variation... has proved both persuasive
and powerful. On the other hand, the evolutionary processes involved in these areas differ in
essential ways from those we now know are operative in the evolution of biological species. The
objective of this essay is to highlight those differences, which a ‘Universal Darwinism’ needs to
encompass, if it is to be broad enough to be a theory that is applicable to the evolution of human
cultures as well as evolution in biology.
Introduction
The last quarter-century has seen a renaissance of the proposal that the pro-
cesses Darwin put forth as driving biological evolution also provide a plausible
theoretical framework for analysis of the evolution of human culture. Two
recent volumes broadly summarize the different strands of this discussion:
Aunger (2000), and Wheeler et al. (2002). Many advocates of the position use
the term ‘Universal Darwinism’ (generally believed to have been coined by
Richard Dawkins 1983) to denote the theory they are advocating.
A large share of the scholars involved in this intellectual movement has come
from the natural sciences, particularly biology, or philosophy, particularly the
philosophy of science. Some have come from psychology, some from anthro-
pology. However, with the exception of the anthropologists, few social scientists
have been involved in these broad interdisciplinary discussions of whether, and
if so in what way, the understanding of evolutionary processes in biology can be
generalized to facilitate understanding of the dynamics of human culture.
As a result, little attention has been paid in this literature to the significant
bodies of empirically oriented scholarship, taking an evolutionary perspective,
that have grown up over the last quarter century in various areas of the social
Biology and Philosophy (2007) 22:73–94 � Springer 2006
DOI 10.1007/s10539-005-9005-7
sciences. In this essay, I will focus particularly on theorizing regarding the
processes that drive change over time in the body of scientific knowledge, in
technology, and business organization and practice. In these bodies of re-
search, change is seen as driven by Darwinian processes involving variation,
selective retention, new variation. In economics, a sizable community of
scholars has been arguing that an evolutionary theory is necessary if econo-
mists are to deal realistically with the changing technologies, firm and industry
structures, and supporting and constraining institutions, involved in long-run
economic growth. Considerable progress has been made in developing, more
generally, evolutionary models of economic behavior and economic change.
It would seem that the scholars involved in discussion of Universal Dar-
winism, and those involved in developing an evolutionary social science, are
only dimly aware of each other. A principal purpose of this essay is to enhance
mutual awareness. For the readers of this journal, this means providing a
broad introduction to various strands of evolutionary social science.
However, before I get into that discussion, it is important that I signal what I
think is an important difference in perspective between, on the one hand, the
broad movement concerned with developing and articulating a Universal
Darwinism, and on the other hand, the various traditions of empirically ori-
ented social science evolutionary theory.
I think it fair to say that virtually all the scholars associated with the writings
on Universal Darwinism tend to start with contemporary biological evolu-
tionary theory, and from that base try to develop generalizations intended to
enable a Universal Darwinism to encompass processes of cultural change (and
perhaps some other ‘evolutionary processes’) as well as biological change.
There are two somewhat different orientations here. One is to stick relatively
closely to biological theory, and to propose generalizations of various of the
concepts. The other is to explore more openly how an evolutionary theory
needs to be structured if it is to encompass the processes of change in human
cultures as well as in biological species. The first of these orientations I would
associate particularly with Dawkins (1976, 1983) and Daniel Dennett (1995).
The second, I would associate with David Hull (1988, 2001), John Ziman
(2002), and a number of anthropologists (for example, Richerson and Boyd
2005). The differences between these two perspectives may sound trivial, but I
would argue that they are significant. There is a significant difference in ori-
entation between looking for analogs of a theory designed for biology which
enable that theory to encompass human culture, and looking for a general
formulation broad enough to encompass both. In particular, the latter for-
mulation tends to be much more sensitive than the former to the details of
cultural evolution in efforts to build a general evolutionary theory, and less
presuming that there are close counterparts to biological structures and
mechanisms in the processes driving change in culture. Thus, the former camp
is inclined to propose that culture can be divided up into entities that can be
called memes that have many aspects in common with biological ‘genes,’ while
the latter camp tends to be much more cautious about such a proposition, and
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to avoid use of the term. Some in the latter camp clearly are uncomfortable
even with the broad term ‘Universal Darwinism,’ on the grounds that such a
label smacks too much of biology. David Hull has put forth the alternative
label ‘general selection processes’ (1988, 2001) for what he proposes are the
general commonalties across the dynamics of biological change, and the
dynamics of change in human culture.
In contrast with both of the intellectual orientations, I have just mentioned,
but particularly the first, a salient feature of most of empirical evolutionary
social science, and certainly the fields I mention above, is that by and large the
development of an evolutionary perspective has been almost inductive.
Researchers studying processes of change in science, in technology, in business
organization and practice, and in economic activity and structure more
broadly, have been drawn to an evolutionary characterization of the dynamics
involved, because that seemed to square with what they were observing. Of
course, there is a strong interest among many of the authors in the similarities
and differences between the evolutionary processes they see as driving change
in their area of research, and evolution in biology. But the primary motivation
for such theorizing seldom seems to have been to explore whether biological
evolutionary analogies might hold in their area of research.
If this proposition sounds odd, I would note that evolutionary theorizing
regardinghuman cultural phenomena long proceeds Darwin. Darwin himself
was influenced by this body of theorizing, and said so. Thus, it is a mistake to
see evolutionary social science largely as a movement to try to apply Darwinian
ideas to the dynamics of human culture, social structures, economic activity
and systems, and politics.
In the remainder of this essay, I shall proceed as follows. In the next section,
I will further develop the argument that evolutionary social science has an
intellectual standing in its own right, and much of it is not appropriately
regarded as basically an effort to apply theory developed for biology to analysis
of human cultures. Of course, in the years since Darwin’s great publication,
Darwinian theory has strongly influenced the shape of evolutionary social
science, as well as generating controversies, and I will consider these aspects as
well. Then, in Section ‘Strands of contemporary evolutionary social science’, I
shall briefly review several strands of contemporary evolutionary social science.
I will argue that there are strong commonalities among the evolutionary the-
ories that have been developed to characterize the dynamics of science, tech-
nology, and business organization and practice, but also some interesting
differences. Then, in Section ‘Evolutionary social science, and evolutionary
biology’, I try to lay out the significant differences between processes of human
cultural evolution, that are common across various areas of culture, and bio-
logical evolution.
In the concluding section I address, from the perspective of a social scientist,
what is required of a Universal Darwinism, if that framework is to be broad
enough adequately to encompass both the common and varied aspects of
human cultural evolution, and evolution in biology.
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The long tradition of evolutionary thinking in the social sciences
As I have noted, the social sciences have a long history of evolutionary theo-
rizing, broadly defined. Evolutionary propositions about cultural and social
development were prominent in the writings of philosophers of the Scottish
enlightenment, for example, Bernard Mandeville (1724), David Hume (1739),
and Adam Smith (1776), all long before The Origin of Species was published.
While some of these earlier writers used metaphors or analogies regarding
the natural world, their thinking generally developed independently of biology.
As Darwin later proposed regarding biological evolution, these early evolu-
tionary social scientists argued that the cultural phenomena prominent around
them were not the result of any well articulated plan (by human beings, or by
God). The hallmark of the evolutionary perspective on cultural and social
change then, as now, was emphasis that prevailing structures were the result of
somewhat myopic processes that had been operating over long periods of time.
Thus, Mandeville described the evolution of warship technology as the accu-
mulation of incremental additions and modifications over many years, with no
overall program guiding that evolution. Hume proposed that a similar process
had molded the body of law and political institutions that prevailed in his era.
Adam Smith’s discussion of the progressive division of labor in pin making and
the associated development of mechanized production, and more generally his
metaphor of an invisible hand behind economic coordination in a market
economy, likewise was an argument that cultural and social order and sys-
tematic progress can occur without overall design. Long before Darwin, these
authors established that complex and efficacious outcomes could be the result
of an evolutionary process operating over long periods of time, without any
overall designer, whether human or divine.
In this sense, these early evolutionary social scientists put forth a theory that
anticipated some of the flavor of Darwin’s. But they did not lay out the pro-
cesses at work.
Darwin’s great theoretical accomplishment was to put forth a particular
mechanism, variation and selective retention, through which evolution worked,
at least regarding the evolution of species. That specification was pretty broad.
Understanding of biological evolution becomes firm only after biologists came
to recognize what was behind variation, on the one hand, and selective
retention, on the other. But Darwin, at least specified the broad processes at
work in evolution, a specification missing in the early evolutionary social sci-
ence.
Thus, Mandeville’s account of the evolution of warship design does not lay
out in what sense various design attributes proved advantageous, or the mech-
anisms through which these survived and accumulated over many generations of
warships. Similar remarks apply to Smith. He articulated a broadly convincing
account of the emergence and development over time of undesigned social
orders, but did not discuss in any detail why and how some social orders sur-
vived and others did not. That is, while these authors hinted at the specific
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mechanisms involved in the evolution of the phenomena they were addressing,
they did not specify those mechanisms.
Not surprisingly, in view of the fact that he had drawn some of his own
inspiration from social science writings, Darwin himself proposed that his
theory of evolution had application beyond biology, and might well fit changes
over time in language, moral ideas, and the structure of human groups. And
Darwin’s theory clearly influenced strongly a number of subsequent writings
on social and cultural phenomena. Thus Walter Bagehot (1872), William James
(1897), Thorstein Veblen (1898, 1899), and others, argued that Darwinian
mechanisms of evolution apply not simply to biology, but also to mental,
epistemological, moral, social, and political evolution, although none of these
authors fleshed out the details explicitly.
As is well known, some of the late 19th century evolutionary social science
writings had a strong nationalist and racist cast. Partly as a result, many early
twentieth century social scientists shied away from adopting ideas from biol-
ogy. In 1944, the influential critique of social Darwinism by Richard Hofs-
tadter warned social scientists of the dangers of taking ideas from biology. For
these and other reasons, for a considerable time evolutionary theorizing about
cultural and social change proceeded under a dark cloud.
In the first half of the twentieth century, both Joseph Schumpeter (1934,
1950) and Friedrick Hayek (1973) developed important evolutionary theories,
Schumpeter’s concerned with the dynamics of competition in modern capitalist
economies, and Hayek’s with the evolution of social orders. It is interesting and
relevant that Schumpeter explicitly rejected the notion that his theory was
connected to biological evolutionary theory. Hayek began to explore the
common evolutionary principles he believed applied both to culture and
biology only towards the end of his career.
Over the last quarter-century, there clearly has been a major renaissance of
explicitly evolutionary theorizing in the social sciences, a portion of it strongly
influenced by Darwin, but important parts of it not much. Evolutionary theory
has become an important part of the research tradition in scholarship on a
variety of different aspects of culture.
In anthropology, a number of writers have proposed that the culture and
social structure of the societies they have been studying need to be understood
as the result of a process of variation, selective retention based on the contri-
bution of different traits to individual and group survival, and a new variation,
along lines very similar to those Darwin put forth in his Origin of Species (see
e.g. Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Boyd and Richerson 1985; Durham
1991; Richerson and Boyd 2005).There is a long tradition of evolutionary
theorizing about how human languages change over time, and of the rela-tionships between languages, and in recent years significant advances have
been achieved in this broad area of research, which recently Croft (2000) has
described.
As many of the readers of this journal are aware, over the last 40 years there
has grown up an extensive body of evolutionary theorizing regarding scientific
77
knowledge. Here, many of the key writers have their backgrounds in Philos-
ophy, or the field of Evolutionary Epistemology as developed by Popper and
Campbell {see e.g. Popper (1959), Campbell (1960, 1974), Plotkin (1982), Hull
(1988, 2001), Kitcher (1993), Nelson (2004)}. Both historians and economists
have put forth evolutionary theories of technological advance (Dosi 1982;
Nelson and Winter 1982; Basalla 1988; Vincenti 1990, 1994; Mokyr 1990, 2002;
Saviotti 1991; Petroski 1992; Metcalfe 1998; Ziman 2000). The literature on the
evolution of business organization and practice is less extensive, but growing
rapidly (Chandler 1962, 1990; Nelson and Winter 1982; Romanelli 1991;
Gavetti and Levinthal 2000; Winter and Szulanski 2000; Zollo and Winter
2002).
My own research interests have been as a scholar of long run economic
change. Relatively early in my career, I came to believe it highly useful to see
many aspects of long run economic change as proceeding through an evolu-
tionary process, and thus found myself in the company of many distinguished
economists of an earlier era, and a growing group of contemporary economists
who are trying to rebuild an evolutionary economics. Hodgson (1993, 1999),
Witt (2003), Nelson and Winter (1982), and Nelson (1995) provide surveys of
the broad point of view. The evolving body of modern evolutionary economic
theorizing takes in several of the particular traditions mentioned above; long
run economic change clearly has involved the evolution of technologies, the
sciences underlying technologies, and the evolution of business firms and
industry structures. But in contrast with the traditions of evolutionary theo-
rizing focused on those particular variables, evolutionary economics tends to
be oriented towards various co-evolutionary processes involved in the broader
development of economic activity and performance. My sketch in the following
section of the evolving nature of evolutionary social science will both contain
brief descriptions of the various arenas of evolutionary theorizing that I
mentioned above, and also a characterization of the dynamic systems theory of
modern evolutionary economics.
Strands of contemporary evolutionary social science
Science as an evolving body of understanding
The proposition that science ‘evolves’ has been around for some time, but in
recent years seems to have become almost a generally accepted point of view
among historians and philosophers of science (For overviews see Henry Plot-
kin 1982, 2002; and David Hull 1988, 2001). Since many of the readers of this
journal are familiar with this body of writing, my treatment can be brief. My
focus will on efforts to develop a persuasive theory of the selection processes
involved in the evolution of scientific knowledge.
The contemporary broad acceptance of an evolutionary theory of science
clearly was shaped by Karl Popper’s theorizing (1959) about the nature of
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science, and of scientific truths, but the particular evolutionary formulation
now in vogue owes largely to Donald Campbell (1960, 1974), and subsequent
writings that have fleshed out or argued with Campbell’s formulation. Using
Campbell’s term, the development of new scientific hypotheses, or theories, is
to some extent ‘blind,’ in that their originators cannot know for sure how they
will fare when they are first put forth. Thus, new scientific theories are
somewhat like ‘mutations’ in that some will succeed and be incorporated into
the body of science, perhaps replacing older theories, or correcting them in
some respects, or adding to them, and others will not succeed. Under Popper’s
argument scientific theories never can be proved true, but they can be falsified.
New theories that solve scientific problems and are not falsified are added to
the body of science. That is, employed and ‘not falsified’ is the characterization
of fitness in this theory of science.
For the most part both Popper and Campbell treat science as a relatively
unified body of doctrine, and their language suggests a scientific community
together searching after truth, that is for collective evolutionary learning. On
the other hand, this theory is compatible with the notion of individual scientists
putting forth their particular theories in hope of winning a Nobel prize. A good
case can be made that both images of science – cooperative and competitive –
are partly correct (see Hull 1988, 2001).
In any case, the theory leaves open two questions. The first is what deter-
mines which theories are to be rigorously tested, and what is the standing of
theories that have not been. The set of ‘theories’ that have not (as of yet) been
subject to rigorous testing do not all necessarily have the same standing. Some
may never be brought to a serious test, simply because they are regarded as
irrelevant, or on their face absurd. Others may fit so well with prevailing
understanding that they are absorbed without direct testing. The second
question is what falsification means; in many cases, the conclusions of a test
may be ambiguous, or there may be reason to question the way it was run, or
whether it was appropriate. Often a theory which seems to fail a test can be
patched up with a well crafted modification or amendment (this was one of
Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) central arguments). These issues open the door to a
much more complicated theory of the evolution of science than at least the
simple interpretation of Campbell’s.
The ‘social constructionists’ recognize and revel in these complications (see
e.g. Bruno Latour 1986). They propose that very few theories, or scientific
arguments more generally, are ever completely falsified, or even put to a test
that all would regard as conclusive. Thus, scientific opinion is what matters
and, in a context where different individuals and groups have different opin-
ions, what is considered scientific fact and is published in reputed journals,
taught to graduate students, etc., is largely a matter of scientific politics.
While politics and prestige certainly play a role in determining the fate of a
scientific argument, most scholars of how the body of accepted science changes
over time clearly believe that the social constructionists have far overstated
their case, and that new scientific hypotheses, or at least those taken seriously,
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are subject to test, and that enough of the tests are sufficiently objective and
unambiguous to monitor the enterprise. This view has been expressed strongly
by Kitcher (1993) and by Hull. Then does science make progress? While social
constructionists are skeptical about this, and Thomas Kuhn was of several
minds, I think it fair to say that most of the theorists who propose science
evolves, certainly Popper, Campbell, Kitcher, Plotkin, and Hull, believe that
the process does generate progress, at least the lines of research pursued. While
occasionally we delude ourselves that we understand something when we do
not, and often the going toward better understanding is hard, by and large
through science we have come to know more and more about nature and how
it works. Or at least this is the flavor of this body of theorizing.
Technology as an evolving body of practice
A number of analysts have proposed technology evolves, and an extensive
literature, involving scholars from a variety of different disciplines, has grown
up focused on the evolution of modern technologies. Despite the differences in
their disciplinary backgrounds, the analyses of Nathan Rosenberg (1976,
1982), Edward Constant (1980), Nelson and Winter (1982), Christopher
Freeman(1982), Giovanni Dosi (1982, 1988), Stanley Metcalfe (1998), George
Basalla (1988), Joel Mokyr (1990, 2002), Petroski (1992), Saviotti (1996),
Walter Vincenti (1990, 1994) and Ziman (2000) are strikingly similar in many
respects. To keep the discussion below simple, here I will follow the discussion
of Vincenti.
In Vincenti’s theory, the community of technologists at any time faces a
number of problems, challenges, and opportunities. He draws most of his
examples from aircraft technology. One of his best worked out cases involves
the development of the retractable landing gear (Vincenti 1994). Vincenti
observes that in the late 1920s and early 1930s, aircraft designers knew well
that the standard pattern of hooking wheels to fuselage or wings could be
improved upon, given the higher speeds planes were then capable of with the
new body and wing designs and more powerful engines that had come into
existence. They were aware of several different possibilities for incorporating
wheels into a more streamlined design. He argues that trials of these different
alternatives were, in the same sense put forth by Campbell, somewhat blind.
This is not to say that the engineers thinking about and experimenting with
solutions were ignorant either of the technical constraints and possibilities or of
what was required of a successful design. Rather, his proposition is that, while
professional knowledge and appreciation of the goals greatly focused efforts at
solution, there still were a number of different possibilities, and engineers were
uncertain about which would prove best, and disagreed among themselves as
to where to place bets.
This kind of uncertainty, together with the proposition that uncertainty is
resolvedonly through expost competition in the relevant operating environment,
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is the hallmark of evolutionary theories. In this case, it turned out that having the
wheel be retractable solved the problem better than did the other alternatives
explored at that time. Thus, ‘fitness’ here is defined in terms of solving particular
technological problems better.
One might propose that identification of this criterion only pushes the
analytic problem back a stage. What determines whether one solution is better
than an other? At times, Vincenti writes as if the criterion were innate in the
technological problem, or determined by consensus of a technological com-
munity who are, like Campbell’s community of scientists, cooperatively
involved in advancing the art.
However, Vincenti also recognizes that the aircraft designers are largely
employed in a number of competing aircraft companies, whose profitability
was affected by the quality and cost of the aircraft designs they are employing,
compared with those employed by their competitors. But then what is better or
worse in a problem solution is determined at least partially by the ‘market,’ the
properties of an aircraft customers are willing to pay for, the costs associated
with different design solutions, etc. In the case of aircraft, the military is an
important customer, as well as the airlines. Thus, the evolution of aircraft at
least partially reflects military demands and budgets, as well as civilian.
These two different perspectives on selection criteria and mechanisms at least
partially reflect that a technology has two different aspects. A technology is, on
the one hand, a collection of artifacts or operating procedures that are oper-
ative at any time, say aircraft being produced by particular companies and used
by particular airlines, and on the other hand, a body of understanding,
including but transcending design concepts, that is possessed by members of a
technological community. In the evolution of technology, the two aspects
co-evolve.
Consideration of the evolution of aircraft technology brings into view several
matters that would appear to differ significantly from what is going on in the
evolution of a field of science. The criteria for whether a new development is an
advance or not, for one. Solving a practical problem or improving performance
would seem quite different kinds of hurdles than advancing understanding in a
field. However, at a closer look, many new scientific findings or theories are
accepted by the relevant community exactly because they enable the solution of
problems that previously had been baffling. Another apparent difference is that
new designs for aircraft or a component of an aircraft generally are developed
through the work of a number of technically trained people whose actions are
coordinated by a business form or other organization doing R and D in the
relevant field, while science tends to be viewed as advancing through the work
of individual scientists. But again, a closer look suggests the differences may
not be all that sharp. In many fields of science, research is a team activity, and
in most fields research is supported and coordinated in formal laboratory
organizations.
While the literature that takes a self conscious evolutionary perspective on
the advance of technologies tends not to discuss the diffusion of new tech-
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nologies explicitly, and while few of the writings in the extensive literature on
the diffusion of innovation recognize explicitly that diffusion is part of an
evolutionary process, of course it is. To anticipate later discussion, a successful
new technology, the design of a retractable landing gear for example, replaces
older technologies partly by the expansion of the firms that introduced the new
technology, and partly by the adoption of that technology by other firms.
As with the case of science, some authors dispute that the evolution of
technology follows a path that might be considered as ‘progress,’ or even that
there are any objective criteria for technological fitness. The book by Wiebe
Bijker et al. (1987) surveys various theories of ‘social construction’ of tech-
nology, all of which deny that there are objective technological criteria, or that
a market reflects stable preferences. Under this perspective, it is nonsense to
propose that technology ‘advances’, except in the sense that certain groups
within society have their way. On the other hand, evolutionary theorists of the
development of technology of the Vincenti camp believe strongly that there is
technological progress, and ask the reader who doubts to compare modern
aircraft with those of 50 years ago, modern pharmaceuticals with those
available before World War II, etc.
Business organization and practice
The literature proposing that organizational and practice ‘evolve’ is less
coherent than the literatures concerned with the evolution of science or tech-
nology, as Romanelli (1991) discusses in her broad review. For our purposes
here, I will focus here on Alfred Chandler’s research (1962, 1990), which was
concerned with how the complex structures that characterize modern multi-
product business firms came into existence, and subsequent writings which
have augmented or taken issue with Chandler’s argument. The history under
consideration here is especially interesting, in that it is a story of coevolution.
The coevolution is not of genes and memes, but of technology and business
organizations.
Chandler argues that a variety of technological developments, particularly
the development of the telegraph and the railroad, that occurred during the mid
and late 19th century opened up the possibility for business firms to be highly
productive and profitable if they could organize to operate at large scales of
output, and with a relatively wide if connected range of products. He describes
various organizational innovations that were tried, and while his central focus
is on those that ‘succeeded,’ it is clear from his account that not all did. Arguing
in a manner similar to Vincenti, Chandler’s ‘fitness criterion’ is that the new
organizational form solves an organizational problem. Presumably the solution
to thatproblem enabled a firm to operate at lower costs, or with greater scale
and scope, in either case, with greater profitability. Like Campbell and
Vincenti, Chandler clearly sees a community, in this case of managers. But he
also sees companies competing with each other. His argument is that companies
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which found and adopted efficient managerial styles and structural forms early
won out over their competitors who did not, or who lagged in doing so.
Chandler’s account of the development of the large multidimensional cor-
poration stresses the need of top firm managers concerned with market defined
efficiency somehow to decentralize and yet still control large and diversified
bureaucracies. Marxians highlight a different aspect of the organizational
forms that evolved – that they sharply reduced the importance of workers with
special skills, and hence shifted power toward capital. Neil Fligstein (1990)
presents a still different view on corporate fitness, which emphasizes respon-
siveness to changed legal regimes, public policies, and the climate of political
opinions more generally toward what corporate action and form ought to be.
While the criteria for selection of new departures would seem to be similar,
there is an important difference between how business organization and
practice evolve, as revealed in empirical studies such as those described above,
and the way that commercial technologies evolve. In most cases, new tech-
nology is developed and tested in a laboratory or other experimental setting,
before it is brought into on-line practice. Vincente’s analysis of the evolution of
aircraft design stresses the importance of learning through actual on-line
experience, but also recognizes that a lot of learning and testing has been done
off-line. The ability to do off-line experimentation and testing with new modes
of business organization and practice is, in contrast, very limited. This would
suggest that innovations in business practice tend to be more ‘blind’, more
random, less sharply focused by research, than technological innovation, and
that is my reading of the empirical evidence. On the other hand, what is learned
in actual experience can and does shape efforts to improve on practice in place
(Zollo and Winter 2002).
A second difference between innovations in business organization and
practice, and technological innovations, tends to be regarding replicability.
Engineers had a pretty good idea as to what was involved in the design of
landing gears that performed well, and while the designs of different companies
often differed significantly, it would appear that this was largely the result of
engineering and economic decisions, rather than inability to design something
similar. In contrast, in the history of the organizational changes described by
Chandler, it is clear that, while companies often used the practices of other
companies as broad guides, strict replication would have been impossible even
if it had been desired. In recent years, a rather extensive literature has devel-
oped on the difficulties of replicating business practices (see e.g. Winter and
Szulanski 2000). Among other things, it is clear that the broad understanding
that underlies business practice is far weaker than the understanding that
underlies many modern technologies, and this makes both reliable imitation
and successful innovation much more difficult for business practices than for
technologies.
For firms operating in industries where technological innovation is an
important vehicle of competition, one might expect to see, then, successful
firms having an organizational structure and set of practices that facilitate
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technological innovation of the sort that wins or holds market position. On the
other hand, if underlying technological or market conditions change so that a
different orientation to technological innovation is needed to be competitive,
established firms might be expected to be sluggish in adjusting. There is now an
extensive empirical literature demonstrating that this often is the case (see e.g.
Tushman and Anderson 1986)
Evolutionary theories of economic change
As discussed above, there is a long tradition of evolutionary theorizing in
economics.
While during the early decades of the twentieth century neoclassical eco-
nomic theory tended to be a dominant view, a number of important econo-
mists, Joseph Schumpeter and Friedrick Hayek in particular, continued to
argue for an evolutionary perspective on the processes of economic change,
and evolutionary explanations for the currently prevailing structure of eco-
nomic activity. And over the last quarter century, a number of economists have
turned towards an evolutionary economic theory.
For many of the economists who espouse an evolutionary perspective, their
central interest has been in understanding the processes driving economic
change, and they find evolutionary arguments natural and fruitful for that
purpose. A number of evolutionary economists have contributed to the liter-
ature on evolution of technologies. Some have contributed to the literature on
the evolution of business organization and practice, with a particular focus on
factors that enable firms to be effective in innovation. However, as I suggested
above, the hallmark of modern evolutionary economics is analysis of the
dynamics of complex systems. A number of the evolutionary models are de-
signed to shed light on the processes of long run economic growth in advanced
industrial nations, where growth has been marked by rising capital intensity of
production, and growing worker productivity, real wage rates, and per capital
incomes, with technological advance clearly the driving force (Nelson and
Winter 1982, Chap 7). Other evolutionary models are focused on the dynamics
of industries where competition is to a considerable extent through product
innovation, the kinds of industries that Schumpeter wrote about in his Capi-
talism, Socialism, and Democracy (1950) (see e.g. Nelson and Winter 1982,
Chap 11 , Klepper 1996). In what follows, I will be principally concerned with
conveying the flavor of this latter kind of evolutionary economic model.
While the details differ, there is a considerable amount of similarity across
these models. In all of them, firms are the primary source of technological
innovation. The innovations firms introduce in any period are the result both
of certain firm specific factors, like their R and D spending and their orien-
tation to R and D, and some random elements. That is, the results of an R and
D effort are recognized as uncertain. How well a firm does in the market at any
time is a function of the character of the products it is offering and its
84
production technology, and what other firms are offering, given the preferences
and information of the customers. As a result of this competition, some firms
make profits, others make losses. Profitable firms expand, and unprofitable
ones contract. In turn, the performance of a firm this period feeds back to
influence the magnitude and nature of its R and D efforts that will determine,
stochastically, the innovations it will introduce next period. Note that the
dynamics of this process determine both the way that technology evolves, and
the way industry structure evolves.
The dynamic process here is often specified in terms of a simulation model.
In some cases, the structure is simplified enough so that the equations can be
solved analytically. This is so both of evolutionary models of Schumpeterian
competition, and models of long run economic growth. I think it fair to say
that, when they have been oriented that way, evolutionary models have done a
quite good job of generating the patterns of the empirical dynamic phenomena
they were designed to address, at least qualitatively (see for example, Nelson
and Winter 1982, Chapter 7, on economic growth in the United States, and
Klepper 1996, on patternsof Schumpeterian competition). And they have done
so with assumptions about the processes of change of the constituent variables,
like technology and business organization, that are consistent with what is
known about the evolutionary processes shaping these variables. In my view,
this represents a major step forward for economic analysis.
Evolutionary social science, and evolutionary biology
There clearly are some interesting similarities between the theory in the
examples of evolutionary social science I have described above, and modern
biological theories of the evolution of species, but also some important dif-
ferences. In both arenas, modern scholarship is firmly committed to a broad
Darwinian theory of change through variation, selection, renewed varia-
tion...On the other hand, the details of the structures and process involved
clearly differ in important ways. In my view, a Universal Darwinism is
acceptable, welcome, if the character of evolutionary process associated with
that conception is broad and general enough to square with the details of what
is going on in both arenas. To achieve that generalization, I want to propose
that there are at least four intertwined characteristics of the evolution of things
like science, technology, business organization – for convenience, I will sub-
sume all of these under the broad term human ‘culture’ – that need to be
admitted under the broad analytical tent.
They are, first, the often major role of human purpose, intelligence, and in
many cases very sophisticated understanding, both in the generation of variety,
and in the selection process. Second, selection criteria and mechanisms seldom
involve directly issues of human survival or reproduction. The well being of
certain kinds of organizations may be at stake, but often not. Third, the body
of human culture cannot simply be characterized in terms of the population of
85
practices and beliefs possessed by individuals at any time, but has a collective
property. These aspects of the evolution of human culture all are involved in a
fourth important difference; the way human individuals and groups are in-
volved with culture and its evolution is different in many ways from the manner
in which genes and living entities are related in the evolution of species.
Each of these points about the evolution of human culture has been made by
other scholars (see for example, the essays by Jablonka, Plotkin, and Midgley,
in Wheeler et al. 2002). My contribution here is to tie these points to the
processes of evolution of aspects of human culture that I reviewed in the
preceding section.
The important role of human purpose, understanding, and intellectual interaction
First of all, there is an important role played by human purpose, and some-
times very sophisticated understanding, in the processes through which much
of human culture evolves. A key point in cultural evolutionary theorizing is
that the complex bodies of action and thought that mark the contemporary
human scene should not be understood as having been created as a result of
some coherent plan, but rather need to be understood as having ‘evolved’. It
also is clear that, in at least some areas of human culture, new variants come
into existence almost randomly, and in some the selection process involves little
in the way of conscious choice. However, as it is important not to play down
the intelligence, planning, learning, arguing, persuading, that often are
involved in some areas of cultural evolution.
The issue here is not whether behavior is intelligent. Intelligent learned
behavior is a characteristic of many species. What I am referring to here is the
unique human ability to imagine and think ‘off-line’ about alternative states of
affairs, and to communicate the results of such thinking to others, and to act on
them.
Recognition of the purpose and thought that often go into innovation would
seem to call for a view of the relevant ‘variation’ in cultural evolution that is
broader than in biological evolution. Variation in Darwinian biological evo-
lutionary theory is variation of genes, and traits and behaviors, in an extant
population at any time. This is the ‘stuff’ on which selection works. However,
in cultural evolution a good portion of the relevant variation is in human
minds, and explored through calculation, discussion, and argument, rather
than in actual practice. Thus, a team of engineers contemplates a wide range of
plausible designs, and gradually homes in on one, before they actually build
and release a new product or process for use. Managers of a business firms may
contemplate a range of possible actions before actually choosing one and
putting it to practice. Scientists often consider a variety of possible explana-
tions for phenomena they are studying, before focusing their research on a
prime candidate. The actual variation at any time is a small portion of the
contemplated variation, and an important part of the selection process involves
the winnowing of alternative ideas for action before final action is taken.
86
It might be argued that there is a definitional issue here. If the concept of
variation in an evolutionary theory is considered to mean only actual extant
variation in practice, which can be ‘tested’ by the environment, then the variety
of possibilities held in mind before action is taken might be considered ‘pre-
practice’ variation, but not the variety that is driving evolution. However, pre-
practice contemplated variety clearly is a vital part of cultural evolution. And it
is a mistake to try to distinguish too sharply between pre-practice variation and
variation in practice. In many cases, like in the process of designing a new
aircraft, there are simulation tests, wind tunnel tests, and tests of a prototype
along the way. The lines between contemplated variety and actual extant
variety is not sharp.
As a social scientist advocating an evolutionary theory of at least many
aspects of cultural change, I want to highlight that my insistence that human
purpose and intelligence often plays a major role in the evolution of culture
does not mean that the process is not evolutionary. The clear fact that scien-
tists, and technologists, carefully consider what they do does not mean that
progress in science and technology can be understood as the result of a
coherent plan. But a serious theory of the evolution of human culture cannot
assume that humans can not think ahead, and often with considerable
sophistication.
Selection criteria and mechanisms
A second important difference between cultural evolution and the processes of
biological evolution is that, while in modern theorizing in biology ‘natural
selection’ on the ‘inclusive fitness’ of the organisms possessing particular traits
provides the basic mechanism molding the evolution of the distribution of
genes in the extant population, there does not seem to be any simple analogy to
this regarding the evolution of many areas of culture.
There are two basic reasons. First, for many areas of cultural evolution, the
survival of the individuals and organizations involved simply is not at stake,
nor in many cases does imitation seem to be focused on easily identifiable
indicators of individual or organizational performance. Thus, the mechanism
of selection cannot be assumed to be something like ‘inclusive fitness’. Second,
the individuals, organizations, groups, that at any time hold particular beliefs
or practices are not locked into them, as biological entities are to their genes,
but can change them. Thus, the relative importance of cultural traits can
change, without any change in the population of the society to which that
culture pertains.
There certainly are important areas of culture where the practices of an
individual or organization do affect how well they do in a way that matters for
their survival or expansion, and in these casesselection criteria for cultural
traits can be associated with growth or decline, or even death, of individuals,
groups, or formal social units. In some cases, biological survival is at stake. As
noted, there is an extensive body of evolutionary writings on the cultures of
peoples living close to the subsistence margin, and here the effect of elements of
87
culture on the ability of individuals and groups literally to survive clearly is
highly relevant. The culture of modern societies contains many food practices
and taboos that have their origins, and in some cases their modern justification,
in protecting health. Similarly, a number of modern medical treatments are in
place because they keep people alive.
But consideration of what is necessary for human biological survival can
carry explanation of the content of modern human cultures only a very limited
distance. For the most part preferences for foods need to be explained on other
grounds. Most of the medicines used by members of modern societies are not
taken to deal with life threatening conditions.
While the life and death of individuals may not be at stake in various areas
of cultural evolution, in many of these cases an analyst can identify a market or
market like structure where the viability of an organization providing a good
or service is dependent on the extent to which what they are providing meets
the demands of those who use it, often in a setting of considerable competition
among suppliers. Thus, business firms can fail if the products and services they
supply, the technologies they are using, and their other practices, do not meet
the competition. Also, in market or market-like settings, firms and individuals
who do well tend to be targets of imitation by those doing less well. In such a
context, there is an appealing analogy between business practice and genes and
business firms and phenotypes.
However, even in a market context, there are limits to the analogy. In the
first place, not all business firms doing poorly because of their use of inferior
technologies or other business practices die as a result; among other things
doing poorly relative to one’s competitors is a powerful stimulus to changing
one’s practice, and many firms are able to do that effectively. Put another way,
the selection mechanism in a market setting may involve business judgment
and decision making, and the shifting of what firms do, as much as it involves
the birth and death of firms. And imitation of successful firms by less successful
ones may be only a small part of managerial efforts to do better.
Also, while economists tend to assume that market organization is pervasive,
it is not. In addition, in many areas of culture the principal organizational
actors are non-profit or public organizations. Primary and secondary educa-
tion, and hospitals, are good cases in point. So is science. In these and similar
arenas, the values influencing selection may have little or nothing to do with
assessments of the performance of particular actors.
In science, while competition for honor and grant financing can be fierce, the
fact of such competition does not illuminate the nature of the criteria and
processes used by scientists that determine whether a new scientific theory is or
is not broadly accepted. A scientific group espousing a particular theory may
gain or lose in reputation and financing in the short run depending on whether
or not their case gains currency in the community. However, the consequences
need not be long run. And of central importance to the argument, I am making
here, without downplaying how the reputation of a group putting forth a
theory influences its reception in the short run, recognize that in the long run
88
the causal arrow largely runs from how a proposed scientific theory ultimately
is evaluated by the discipline, to the effect on the reputations of groups who
had taken different positions on that theory, as contrasted with the other way.
It seems clear that in many areas of culture, what new elements are
accepted and rejected depends largely on how well they meet the preferences
and values that are operative in the selection process. This is true even of
areas of culture that are strongly market oriented, in that the profitability of
firms to a considerable extent depends on their ability to meet the preferences
of their customers. And, as I have noted, there are many areas of culture
where literal market mechanisms are not operative, or operate very weakly.
The heart of an evolutionary analysis of culture, therefore, involves identi-
fying the preferences values and criteria operative in selection, and the
mechanisms enforcing them.
Culture as a collective phenomena
A third area where cultural evolution differs from biological evolution, or at
least the simple standard model thereof, resides in the nature of culture itself, as
a body of practice, beliefs, values, and norms, that are broadly shared within a
society. It is a mistake to view culture simply in individualistic terms, arguing in
effect that only the attributes of individuals are real, or to see the process
through which culture evolves strictly in individualistic terms.
Culture is a collective phenomenon, affecting by its collective nature the way
that individuals and groups within a society think and act. Elements of culture
have substance, and can be studied, in their own right, independent of the
particular individuals and groups who adhere to those elements. Put another
way, elements of culture have a life that transcends the individuals that identify
with those elements at any time. And there are a number of particular features
of human society that only can be understood in terms of shared perception of
a shared culture that profoundly affects the individuals who share it.
The importance of a shared culture, and the institutions that support that
sharing, is an important element in all the areas I am focusing on here. Vir-
tually all scholars of the modern scientific enterprise highlight its community
nature, and the institutions supporting a core of common beliefs at any time, as
scientific associations, and the academic disciplines that educate new entrants
to the community. Similar structures are important in many fields of tech-
nology. A number of scholars of business organization and practice have
written of the important role of precedent and general opinion in influencing
managerial decisions regarding business practice.
The argument I have presented above has some things in common with
arguments for the presence of group selection, or selection on species as a
whole, in biology. But I propose that the features and mechanisms that link
human cultures to the individuals who share that culture are particular in
important respects.
89
Different kinds of connections between culture and units of society
Taken together, the particular characteristics of the evolution of human culture
discussed above mean that the connections between elements of culture, and
individuals and groups in society, are different than the connections between
genes and the phenotypes that possess those genes in biological evolution.
Partly the issue here has to do with whether it is useful, or misleading, to think
of the units of culture as being gene-like. Partly it has to do with the rela-
tionships between a body of culture, and the members of society that, in a
sense, operate under that culture.
The proposition that culture usefully can be divided into a collection of gene-
like elements was, of course, forcefully put forward by Dawkins (1983) with his
concept of memes. Many Universal Darwinist’s have shied away from use of
that term, and instead proposed the term ‘replicator’. But the connotation here
still is that culture can be viewed as consisting of a collection of elements, that
have at least some strong gene-like characteristics. The key question, of course,is how useful is it to view culture this way, as a collection of ‘replicators’? My
belief is that this depends on the area of culture.
Replicability almost certainly is of central importance in the process of
evolution of a number of areas of culture. The operation of the modern sci-
entific enterprise depends on the ability of one group of scientists to replicate,
at least broadly, the experiments and calculations of other scientists. It also is
clear that many elements of ‘technology’ are consistently the same when used
by different parties, and over time, and are ‘transferable’ with considerable
fidelity from user to user. There certainly are lapses in these areas of culture
from strict canons of ‘replicability’, but I am not uncomfortable with use of the
concept there.
On the other hand, none of these characteristics seem to hold for many
elements of business practice. While Winter and I (1982) referred to organi-
zational routines as like the genes of an organization, what we largely meant
was that they were what gave constancy and durability to organizational
behavior, not that they were easily transferable to, or replicable by, other
organizations. The empirical evidence on organizational practices that are not
largely embodied in artifacts indicates clearly that often they are not. And
outside of the areas of culture on which I am concentrating, there are many in
which interpretation or practice differs in significant ways across members of
the society, and where the term ‘replication’ tends to repress the often highly
idiosyncratic results that occur when a new member of a society takes on board
an element of prevailing culture.
While the issue of replicability of elements of culture has been a topic of
discussion, it seems to be less well recognized that, unless the contrary is
stressed, the proposition that an element of culture is gene-like is likely to be
interpreted as implying that a member of society ‘holds’ an element of culture
in the same way that a phenotype has genes. But this clearly is not right. In
some areas of culture, the connections certainly are quite durable. It would
seem that most persons go through life with the religion they grew up with, and
90
many of the political beliefs. But even in these areas of culture, some people
change. And in other areas of culture, change in belief or practice can be
frequent and widespread. As I have stressed, a scientist can change his or her
mind. A technologist may come to master a new set of design concepts, and
abandon use of an earlier design philosophy. A business term can change its
strategy, with or without changing its CEO.
Also, at any time connections with an element of culture generally are a
matter of degree, not kind, and connection itself may have several aspects.
Members of a scientific community differ in their degree of knowledge about,
even awareness of, a particular theory or technique. Among those in the know,
beliefs about whether the theory is right or useful may differ in degree.
Members of a craft community generally differ in their skills in using a par-
ticular technique, as well as in their degree of belief that it is the most
appropriate technique for a particular purpose. More generally, unlike the
question of whether a particular phenotype has a particular gene, which gen-
erally has a yes or no answer, the connection between an element of culture and
a member of society generally cannot be so simply characterized.
This point highlights the general argument I am trying to make here.
Structures and mechanisms that are central features in the evolution of bio-
logical species cannot be assumed to have close analogies in the evolution of
human culture. Rather, the structures and mechanisms that are involved in the
evolution of human culture need to be identified and studied in their own right
(For a broadly compatible view on this, but one more sympathetic to efforts to
find analogies to biological evolution, see Hodgson and Knudsen 2004).
A summing up
Let me pull strands together. The first point I have been making is that
evolutionary theorizing about cultural, social, and economic phenomena has
had a life of its own, going back well before Darwin, with much of it still
motivated by an empirical appreciation for the dynamic forces at work in an
area of study, rather than by any theoretical preconceptions regarding the rel-
evance of Darwin’s ideas. On the other hand, I believe that a broad Darwinian
theory of evolution through variation and selective retention seems highly
applicable to the study of the processes of change in various areas of culture,
and its conscious application significantly enhances the power and rigor of
theorizing there.
Second, the details of the processes of cultural evolution differ sharply from
the details of biological evolution. This is not surprising, given the disparities of
the subject matter. This is not to say there are no useful analogies, other than at
the broad level that change in both arenas involves variation and selection. But
in my view useful analogies ought to come mostly out of careful empirical
investigation regarding what is going on in cultural evolution, and identification
of some potentially interesting similarities to aspects of biological evolution,
91
rather than from hunting for or constructing analogies on the presumption that
they ought to be there. Thus, while the details of biological evolution involve
entities like genes, and phenotypes that contain packages of genes whose
inclusive fitness feeds back to influence the incidence of different genes in the
population, cultural evolution may or may not involve closely analogous
mechanisms.
Third, the details of the processes of cultural evolution are not the same
across areas of culture. The differences are interesting and important. Thus, the
processes for screening newly reported scientific findings and theories, for
acceptance or rejection into the corpus of professionally accepted scientific
knowledge, seems very much a collective community process, while the selec-
tion processes for new commercial technologies seems to involve prominently
competition among firms. As another example, ideas for new technologies tend
to be put through a variety of processes of analysis and off-line testing before
they are brought to practice and tested on-line, while it is very difficult to test
new managerial practices off line in any convincing way.
In short, I am fully convinced of the broad applicability of a general evo-
lutionary theory, with the dynamics driven by variation, relatively systematic
selection, new variation, in analysis of many aspects of the evolution of human
culture. However, I believe that attempts to force the details of cultural evo-
lution into a framework that works in biological evolution, in particular to
assume that close analogues to entities like genes and processes like the
dynamics of inclusive fitness, that are key in biology obviously ought to exist
regarding culture, are generally misconceived and counterproductive. Indeed it
seems to me that the differences are as interesting as the similarities, and I
would like urge a broad and flexible view of evolutionary theories of change.
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