On 8/20/2012 5:39 PM, Humberto Barreto wrote:
> ------ EH.NET <http://eh.net/> BOOK REVIEW ------
>
> Esben Sloth Andersen (Professor of Evolutionary Economics at Aalborg 
> University in Denmark) is in tune with many of his fellow European 
> Schumpeter scholars, who tend to focus on extending the implications 
> of Schumpeter's evolutionary method, and to give substantial attention 
> to all of Schumpeter's moves; ...
>


Use of the term "evolutionary" to describe Schumpeter's method creates a 
risk of considerable confusion. Economists interested in the process of 
change might better follow a distinction that Richard Lewontin offers 
for viewing biological change, that is, to distinguish between 
evolutionary processes and developmental processes:

"Development is a transformational theory of change. In transformational 
theories the entire ensemble of objects changes because each individual 
object undergoes during its lifetime the same law-like history. ... In 
contrast, the Darwinian theory of organic evolution is based on a 
variational model of change. The ensemble of individuals changes, not 
because each individual is undergoing a parallel development during its 
life, but because there is variation among individuals and some variants 
leave more offspring than others." (The Triple Helix, pp. 8-9)

For biologists then, "evolution is change in the properties of 
populations of organisms or groups of such populations" (Douglas J. 
Futuyma, "Evolutionary Biology"). In other words, it is populations that 
evolve but individuals do not.

Schumpeter repeatedly emphasized that the sources of change are "from 
within," and the school of evolutionary thinking that surrounds the 
Journal of Evolutionary Economics follows this path. Ulrich Witt, for 
example, defines evolution as "the transformation of a system over time 
through endogenously generated change." And Nicolai Foss sees evolution 
as "the transformation of already existing structures and the emergence 
and possible spread of novelties." Following Lewontin's dichotomy, 
however, Witt and Foss are talking about development not evolution.

I don't mean to imply that transformational change is unimportant; but 
the risk of confusing that kind of change with processes that are more 
akin to a variational model of change (random variation, inheritance, 
selection, etc.) is high when a single term is used to define two 
distinct processes.

Michael Nuwer