Turning Economics into an Evolutionary Science: Veblen, the Selection Metaphor, and Analogical Think

May 22, 04:33 AM

Current Headlines: By Cordes, Christian

But by scientifically colloquial usage we have come to speak of preDarwinian and post-Darwinian science, and to appreciate that there is a significant difference in the point of view between the scientific era which preceded and that which followed the epoch to which his name belongs. (Veblen 1919, 36)

In his article, "Why is economics not an evolutionary science?" Thorstein Veblen says that "economics is helplessly behind the times, and unable to handle its subject-matter in a way to entitle it to standing as a modern science" (1898b, 403). In addition, he claims that "modern sciences are evolutionary sciences" (1898b, 403). A way to remedy this problem and to turn economics into an evolutionary science is to introduce aspects of Darwin's explanatory model of biological evolution to economic theory. However, there are different possibilities how Darwinian concepts can be harnessed to further develop economic theory. This problem has triggered a conceptual-methodological debate in the economic community.

This paper discusses several explanatory approaches to economic phenomena - the concept of routines, Universal Darwinism, and the continuity hypothesis - that rely on concepts borrowed from biology. To emphasize the differences between these avenues, special attention is given to their dealing with the units and processes of selection in biological and economic evolution. Selectionist models analogous to phylogenetic biological evolution are prominent in many works in the field of evolutionary economics. Moreover, the relation of these approaches to Veblen's own notions and demands with regards to the conversion of economics into an evolutionary science is highlighted. How fruitful is the introduction of explanatory models stemming from biology as analogies to economic theory development? How do evolutionary - Darwinian - thought and economic evolution relate? In answering these questions, this paper offers an interpretation of Veblenian thinking that deviates from existing receptions.'

The paper is organized as follows: section two takes a closer look at processes and units of selection in the biological and cultural realms. It addresses the question of whether it is possible to delimit units of selection in cultural evolution and whether there is an analogy to the process of natural selection. Section three presents basic statements and underlying notions of the continuity hypothesis that can serve as an analytical framework for evolutionary processes in economics. The details of Veblen's notions of an evolutionary science are the subject matter of section four and the last section offers some conclusions.

The Role of the Selection Metaphor in Economic Theory

Although some economists claim the use of analogies to biological evolution can serve as a unifying research paradigm in evolutionary economics (Nelson 1995), it is still not clear in what sense Darwinian concepts are relevant for economics (see e.g., Vromen 2001; 2004; Witt 2003, 3-18; Cordes 2005c; 2006). While there is no doubt the human species is a result of natural evolution, how the modern forms of the human economy can be explained in terms of Darwin's model of biological evolution is a controversial issue. Many scholars interested in economic evolution refer to more or less abstract analogies to, or at least a metaphorical use of, Darwinian notions to arrive at an evolutionary concept of economic development. Often, the selection metaphor is considered the distinguishing principle of evolutionary economics (see e.g., Dosi and Nelson 1994; Nelson 1995).

One reason for this is that abstractions from natural evolution are the only existing well-established general notion of evolution. Consequently, neo-Darwinian adaptation principles of genetic variation and natural selection are considered the archetype of an evolutionary theory also in economics (Witt 2003, 7). In contrast to such an approach, Joseph Schumpeter and Edith Penrose, for example, explicitly denied Darwin's explanatory model of biological evolution any relevance for understanding economic development (see Schumpeter 2002; Penrose 1952; Witt and Cordes 2006). One reason for this reluctance to derive abstract principles from biological evolution in order to apply these to economic development was the observation that the heuristic analogy to physical gravitating systems underlying neoclassical theory obscured much of the interesting phenomena of real world economic evolution (Witt 2002). Referring to the usage of the term "statics" in economics, Veblen recognized the same problem:

The word is borrowed from the jargon of physics, where it is used to designate the theory of bodies at rest or of forces in equilibrium. But there is much in the received economic theories to which the analogy of bodies at rest or of forces in equilibrium will not apply. . . . So, for instance, it seems scarcely to the point to speak of the statics of production, exchange, consumption, circulation. (1919, 83)

Hence, Schumpeter and Penrose's theories of capitalist development put the crucial role of innovations and entrepreneurship center stage, i.e., the sources of novelty and change emerging from within the economy, without recourse to Darwinian thought. Penrose wrote:

The chief danger of carrying sweeping analogies very far is that the problems they are designed to illuminate become framed in such a special way that significant matters are frequently inadvertently obscured. (1952, 804)

Some of the problems Penrose is referring to become obvious when analyzing the role of selection in biology and economics in detail. In every kind of evolving system, the sources of variation - on an abstract level - are of outstanding importance for the endeavor of explaining its behavior, as are those selective forces that work to reduce this variety.2 However, there are crucial differences on a more concrete level of analysis. In biological evolution, the supply of variation is renewed mainly by mutations and recombinations of parental genes, i.e., genetic crossover in every generation, both providing the "raw material" for natural selection (Mayr 1991, 88). Moreover, an essential attribute of any selection argument is the stability of selective characteristics and environment over time. Natural selection is an a posteriori phenomenon (Darwin 1859, chap. 4; Lewontin 1970; Mayr 1991, 87).3

Thus, a necessary condition for natural selection to produce systematic change is a certain degree of inertia on the part of the environment and the unit of selection. Furthermore, according to the central dogma of molecular biology, no information contained in the properties of the somatic proteins could be transferred to the nucleic acids of DNA (Dawkins 1983; Mayr 1991, 120). The phenotype does not pass information to the genotype. Consequently, a fundamental component of any theory of selection is insistence on the temporary constancy of the genetic material or any equivalent to enable selection forces to work and the absence of a systematic feedback between phenotype and genotype. However, and that is the fundamental problem of an analogy construction, the environment of economic systems is characterized by many variables changing simultaneously preventing something like natural selection forces to work in a systematic way, i.e., to direct the distribution of traits in a population in a certain direction (Witt 2004).

Moreover, humans are endowed with the cognitive capabilities that allow them to anticipate and avoid selection effects. Behaviors, habits, routines, or institutions do not exhibit the constancy of genetic material, but are adapted systematically to selection pressure. Therefore, cultural evolution is characterized by a systematic interaction between variation and selection: a positive feedback is established between the generation and the diffusion of novelty. Hence, Veblen, while acknowledging the stabilizing effects of habits on human behavior, emphasized the continuous instinct driven change and the malleability of habits and the institutions based on them:

So that the manner, and in a great degree the measure, in which the instinctive ends of life are worked out under any given cultural situation is somewhat closely conditioned by these elements of habit, which so fall into shape as an accepted scheme of life. (1914, 7)

On the other hand the habitual elements of human life change unremittingly and cumulatively, resulting in a continued proliferous growth of institutions. (1914, 18)

Given these insights, concepts that rely on an identification of pheno- and genotypes (or interactors and replicators, as in, for example, Knudsen 2004) in cultural evolution have to take into account the fact that there is indeed systematic feedback between these entities that restrict the explanatory power of such an analogy construction.4

Within evolutionary economics, firms are often considered to be a kind of phenotype in cultural evolution, whose functioning relies on routines, the genotype (see e.g., Nelson and Winter 1982; Hodgson and Knudsen 2006; Becker et al. 2005). In the case of the development of a firm, a "business conception" may be considered to guide its development as an \entrepreneurial venture based on some more or less concrete imaginings about what business to engage in and how to do it. However, in contrast to a genetic program governing the ontogenesis of an organism, this conception is subject to permanent variation in direct feedback from the development it induces (Witt 2000). Firms can, for instance, learn and react creatively to problems emerging during development and adapt the "business conception." Penrose (1952, 813-14) makes a similar point that "there is no a priori justification for assuming that firms, in their struggle for profits, will not attempt as much consciously to adapt the environment to their own purposes as to adapt themselves to the environment." Another crucial difference is that a genetic program is the result of a long-run process of natural selection between competing variants. A "business conception," in contrast, does not pass such a selection-based adaptation process and enters the economic domain with no proven adaptive value. Instead, human intentionality and deliberation play a crucial role in this aspect of cultural evolution, particularly in the selection of technologies, products, and routines of behavior (Witt and Cordes 2006).

In general, the notion of "routines" as basic - gene-like - components of organizational behavior is based on an analogy construction to the biological sphere (see as a point of origin, Nelson and Winter 1982). However, as proponents of "routine theory" concede (e.g., Becker et al. 2005; Becker 2004), many organizational routines are periodically, or even almost always, in flux and subject to managerial influences, innovations, and endogenous change. It is impossible to specify routines in a complete way. If this is the case, they cannot be considered to be "gene-like" and thus fail to serve as inert units of selection.5 What is more, the more interesting research question would then concern the cognitive and socio-cognitive processes underlying these deliberate interventions, diffusion processes, and firm internal dynamics. Especially, non-routine human problem solving behavior and its motivational founding would be of outstanding relevance in this context.

Thus, crucial aspects of organizational change are related to non- routine phenomena. Examples are the problem of shirking, the challenge to implement shared cognitive frames, managerial decisions, establishing trust, innovations within a routine, or the appearance of bottlenecks in the production process that channel human cognitive resources devoted to creative problem solving. That is what Veblen had in mind when saying the following:

These unremitting changes and adaptations that go forward in the scheme of institutions, legal and customary, unremittingly induce new habits of work and of thought in the community, and so they continually instill new principles of conduct; with the outcome that the same range of instinctive dispositions innate in the population will work out to a different effect . . . (1914, 17)

Another problem connected to a routine-based analysis of firm behavior refers to the identification of routines themselves: due to their malleability and potential complexity, there are great difficulties in describing them in detail. That is why there has been slow progress in understanding how organizational routines emerge, how they change, and what impact they have on organizations (see e.g., Becker et al. 2005). A firm's internal selection processes of routines or practices also involve higher cognitive capabilities. In that case, certain routines or practices are chosen deliberately. It is not differential reproduction - as in natural selection processes - of routines that changes their relative frequencies within a population.

In biological evolution, the environment does not directly select among entities, but the organisms cope with the environment more or less successfully (Mayr 1991, 87). Darwinian selection does not involve an intelligent agent who chooses. In contrast, in cultural evolution there is an external selection force, for example, consumers, entrepreneurs, or political institutions that actively select among entities (see e.g., Khalil 1995). Entities are chosen through the agency of selectors using the surrogate criteria of "fitness." This kind of selection is principally different from Darwin's natural selection. In a similar manner, John Commons (1934, 103) draws a sharp line between the natural and the social sciences by emphasizing the differences between processes of biological, natural selection and the "artificial" selection of habits, customs, and institutions taking place by intelligent, purposive, forwardlooking, and creative agents, i.e., adaptation by deliberate choice (see also Asso and Fiorito 2004). To understand the latter, questions concerning the interests and motivations of the selecting agents have to be addressed.6 Once more; human goaldirected behavior renders the functioning of the three mechanisms - selection, variation, and inheritance - interdependent rather than independent. Moreover, purposeful human action, for example, the deliberate choosing of certain entities, gives rise to "directional" change in cultural evolution (as recognized by Veblen, see Cordes 2005b). As a result, the processes and criteria of selection are very dissimilar from biological selection (Witt 1999).

In cultural evolution, agents choose between alternatives, products, behaviors, ideas, etc., processes one could call selection, however, these processes are a kind of one-off selection, because they do not trigger progressive evolution (Dawkins 1983). They do not involve replication or the succession of generations, which are both prerequisites for cumulative selection processes giving rise to adaptive complexity in the biological sphere. The choice of an economic agent represents an act of subset selection, i.e., she picks out a subset from a set according to a criterion of preference (see Price 1995). In the Darwinian concept of natural selection, offspring are not subsets of parents but due to genetic recombination, new entities. Furthermore, natural selection is not carried out by intelligent agents who choose between these entities. Using Darwinian terms is confusing, for the underlying mechanisms of selection differ fundamentally - an objection already raised by Schumpeter and Penrose. Moreover, a form of selection, interpreted in a general sense, underlies every state of order. Therefore, a too broad application of the notion of "selection" leads to a void concept of it.

In another methodological-conceptual contribution to an evolutionary analysis in economics, Geoffrey Hodgson (2002) expounds his notion of a concept labeled "Universal Darwinism" - a core set of Darwinian principles that, along with auxiliary explanations specific to each scientific domain, is considered applicable to a wide range of phenomena.7 He argues that evolutionary aspects of the biological and cultural spheres both involve the general Darwinian principles of variation, inheritance, and selection.8 Therefore, Universal Darwinism seeks to substantially apply Darwinian principles to cultural evolution, i.e., it is argued that these principles are also valid for explaining other forms of evolution. Consequently, Universal Darwinism is proposed as a broad theoretical framework for the analysis of the evolution of all open, complex systems, including economic systems.

Hodgson argues that Darwinian evolution shares some common general features with economics due to the fact that both biology and the social sciences address evolving systems. Thus, he says, Darwin's explanatory model provides a theoretical framework and ontological precepts. Universal Darwinism suggests making substantial use of Darwinian concepts, i.e., the latter is not applied only in a heuristic or metaphorical form. The intention is to apply Darwinian principles as a general purpose tool to various forms of evolution sharing a common ontological basis (Hodgson and Knudsen 2006; Knudsen 2004). These principles - variation, inheritance, and selection - are an abstract reduction derived from the Darwinian theory. Hence, domain-specific principles of evolutionary biology and the relationships between them are, within an analogy construction, transferred to economics. Knudsen, joining Hodgson in this endeavor, argues "that an appreciation of the causal structure of neo-Darwinism may help develop a general selection theory which can be used as a basis for a development of evolutionary economics" (Knudsen 2002. 446). Obviously, some domain- specific content in the form of a "causal structure" is entering the argument here. Hodgson (2002, 2003) introduces socioeconomic replicators such as habits, routines, and institutions, which are compared to DNA, and that are subsequently subject to selection processes. Again, some domainspecific contents from biology inspire the development of the argument.

The term "natural (Darwinian) selection" does not describe an abstract or general process, as argued in this section, but a domain- specific process bound to certain premises, a problem encountered by every theoretical concept based on universal or generalized Darwinism. Therefore, the modern human economy is hardly explicable in terms of the theory of natural selection. The latter is ineligible as a general principle for all evolving systems. The socio-economic environment and socioeconomic entities are changing rapidly, compared to the long and stable epochs in biological evolution and the timescale of change in cultural evolution is much shorter than would be required for selection forces to produce systematic effects. That is the reason economists have to provide domain-specific theories for the economic realm that are not guided by a general Darwinian framework - as a universal metatheory. Instead, as it is suggested by the continuity hypothesis presen\ted in the next section, an approach that takes into account the evolved cognitive and physical dispositions of agents and the constraints imposed on economic evolution by biological evolution proves to be fruitful. This, it will be shown, is consistent with Veblen's notions of an evolutionary economics. As a result of this section's argument it can be stated that the usefulness of invoking natural selection as a metaphor or an analogy for conceptualizing processes of economic change is at least debatable.

Avoiding Analogical Thinking: The Continuity Hypothesis

Another approach developed in economics is labeled "continuity hypothesis" (Witt 2003. 15-6; 2004; Cordes 2006). The continuity hypothesis represents a way of showing how Darwinian theory can be relevant for turning economics into an evolutionary science - thereby meeting a Veblenian desire: the human species is a result of natural (Darwinian) evolution; natural evolution has shaped the ground and still defines the constraints for human-made, or cultural evolution. There is an ontological continuity between biological and cultural evolution despite the fact that mechanisms and regularities differ between these domains. Culture evolves following its own regularities on the foundations laid before by natural selection in the form of innate human dispositions. Consequently, there is no analogy construction between the biological and the economic realm involved in this approach.

According to the continuity hypothesis, the historical process of economic evolution can be conceived as emerging from, and embedded in, the constraints shaped by evolution in nature. Darwinian theory explains the origins of economic evolution in human phytogeny and fosters the understanding of the lasting influence of innate elements, dispositions, and programs on behavior, which are results of the forces of natural selection and impose limitations on cultural evolution. Veblen made a similar point when he said:

Human activity, in so far as it can be spoken of as conduct, can never exceed the scope of these instinctive dispositions, by initiative of which man takes action. (1914, 1)

For mankind as for the other higher animals, the life of the species is conditioned by the complement of instinctive proclivities and tropismatic aptitudes with which the species is typically endowed. (1914, 1)

From this perspective, the biologically evolved foundations of learning and reasoning directly enable and affect cultural evolution. Evolutionary selection has created a set of cognitive devices that participate in generating human behavior (see e.g., Singer 2000). This behavioral repertoire is the basis on which other forms of evolution rest (see also Veblen 1899, chap. IX). With respect to the human agent, Veblen (1898a, 193) stated, "(h)e acts under the guidance of propensities which have been imposed upon him by the process of selection to which he owes his differentiation from other species."

Darwinian theories of evolution are suited to explain the natural origins of human learning, intentionality, and deliberative behavior for example, but are ill suited to grasp the dynamics of cultural evolution based on these evolved cognitive capabilities (Witt 2004).9

This departure rejects the application of abstract principles derived from "Darwinism" to socio-economic evolution. At a point in time, Darwinian evolutionary theory lost its explanatory power for explaining human behavior. Therefore, Veblen was right: "The typical human endowment of instincts, as well as the typical make-up of the race in the physical respect, has according to this current view been transmitted intact from the beginning of humanity . . ." (1914, 18).

After a period of co-evolution with natural evolution, cultural evolution eventually allowed forms of human behavior to emerge that entailed a strong relative reproductive success, reducing selection pressure significantly and increasing behavioral variety.10 Other forms of evolutionary change continue beyond that point within the freedom left by the constraints of Darwinian evolution, though with different means and according to their own regularities. This establishes an ontological continuity of evolution without expanding the domain of Darwinian concepts to these new evolutionary phenomena. There are other, cultural, domainspecific realizations of evolutionary processes.

Veblen emphasized this ontological continuity and the role of human agency in economic development:

It is in the human material that the continuity of development is to be looked for; and it is here, therefore, that the motor forces of the process of economic development must be studied if they are to be studied in action at all. (1898b, 388)

He was convinced that the study of human cognition could be greatly informed by identifying the adaptive problems that humans faced in the course of their phylogeny (1898a). The human agent "is a creature of habits and propensities given through the antecedents, hereditary and cultural, of which he is an outcome" (1898b, 414). The human desires under whose guidance action takes place, are "the products of his hereditary traits and his past experience, cumulatively wrought out under a given body of traditions, conventionalities, and material circumstances" (1898b, 411). In a very basic sense, Darwinian theory is relevant for economics: the human species is a result of natural evolution. However, this does not imply a correspondence of analytical concepts in biology and economics.

There are further problems of such an analogy construction; there are no such things as sexual reproduction, mutation, or speciation in cultural evolution providing the "raw material" for natural selection (see Cordes 2006). The sources of variety in both realms are fundamentally different. Novel artifacts or ideas are not generated randomly; they are the result of goal-oriented, conscious design or of deliberately conducted searches for novelty, whose outcome is not yet entirely clear and may depend on a certain degree of serendipity." In this context, Veblen argues, it is by the prompting of instinct that reflection, deliberation, and technological creativity come to be employed (see also Twomey 1998). Moreover, variety is introduced by processes that are not completely blind to the ultimate fate of the variants. In addition, humans are capable of a great variety of different forms of learning: cognitive, non-cognitive, social, instructive, and collaborative, which means cultural creation or co-construction. These forms of learning introduce qualities that excel the trial and error of genetic evolution and are the basis of Veblenian cumulative institutional evolution. The introduction of variation in the form of deliberate adaptations is the result of cognitive processes, such as imagination, learning, and hypotheses formation that follow their own regularities (Witt 2004).

In comparing cultural and organic evolution, there is, in this context, another important difference (Alexander 1981); in organic evolution, the causes of genetic variations are independent of the causes of natural selection. In nature, the natural selection of random recombinations and mutations advance evolution. Here, the term "random" denotes that variation does not occur in response to the needs of the organism (Mayr 1991, 143). Cultural evolution differs, due to the fact that the causes of cultural novelties are not independent of the wants, instincts, and longings of individuals, for example, the striving to avoid "selection pressure." Meeting the needs of the agents is a crucial driving force behind the introduction of variation, i.e., the design of novelty. "Design" indicates purpose; a variant's features are bound to be correlated with their intended purpose for its maker (see Khalil 1995; Ziman 2000, 7).

Hence, there is no "Darwinian" theory of cultural evolution. Intentional human action and deliberate design are the essential ingredients of cultural evolution. In Veblen's words:

The ends of life, then, the purposes to be achieved, are assigned by man's instinctive proclivities; but the ways and means of accomplishing those things which the instinctive proclivities so make worth while are a matter of intelligence. (1914, 5-6)

Therefore, cultural phenomena require tailored conceptions and explanations that do not rest on Darwinian analogies. Culture evolves according to its own regularities on the foundations laid before by natural selection in the form of innate human dispositions. The next section will show in more detail how Veblen's notions of an evolutionary economics fit into this perspective and how these can inspire further research in economics.

Veblen's Darwin-Inspired Approach to an Evolutionary Economics

Veblen's Darwin-inspired theory of cumulative evolutionary change is perfectly in line with the continuity hypothesis. It starts from a theory of human nature as a result of biological evolution. When setting the stage for his analysis of the nature and causes of the growth of institutions, he argued:

A genetic inquiry into institutions will address itself to the growth of habits and conventions, as conditioned by the material environment and by the innate and persistent propensities of human nature; and for these propensities, as they take effect in the give and take of cultural growth, no better designation than the time- worn 'instinct' is available. (1914, 2-3)

Veblen took into account the interaction of "innate and persistent propensities of human nature" with aspects of "cultural growth" showing his willingness to place humans' biological inheritance within the dynamics of cultural evolution (see also Dugger 1984; Murphree 1959; Asso and Fiorito 2004). In his view, institutional change originates from the interactions of a given instinctive endowment of humans, prevailing habits of thought, and existing institutions (see Rutherford 1984; 1998; Cordes2005b). Impulses of instinctive factors and the urge to conform to habits are the main determinants of human behavior in his model.12 According to Veblen, it is the evolved set of instincts in combination with habits of thought that provide the motivational driving forces of human behavior (1899; 1914, 3). Instinctive proclivities, he argues, assign the ends and purposes of life and prompt reflection and deliberation to be employed to reach these aims (see also Twomey 1998). New technologies employed by the agents to reach their instinctively given goals entail a cumulative change in the basic patterns of life and lead to the emergence of new habits of action and thought replacing established habits and finally institutions.

Note the fundamental differences between this process of institutional change and a concept based on an abstract analogy to selection processes in biology. For example, in such an analogy construction, the individuals - as the units of selection - do not react to selection pressure and do not systematically influence the selection process as such but stay passive. Veblen's account of human nature explicitly contradicts such a passive interpretation. What is more, he has complained about formulations of economic theory in which "the human material with which the inquiry is concerned is conceived in hedonistic terms; that is to say, in terms of a passive and substantially inert and immutably given human nature" and in which the agent "is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another" (1898b, 411). He states that "the hedonistic man is not a prime mover" and that human agents have "a coherent structure of propensities and habits which seeks realization and expression in an unfolding activity" (1898b, 411).

In Veblen's model of institutional change, on one hand, the technologydriven emergence of new habits of life and thought translate into institutional change (Veblen 1899; 1914). On the other, institutions affect the habits of life by influencing the pace and direction of technological advancement. Hence, the sequence of cumulative change in Veblen's approach comprises institutions affecting technology and technology affecting institutions. There are causal links between institutions and endogenous technological change running in both directions as there are multiple layers of interaction between instinctive motivation and intentional economic behavior. Veblen's instincts must be viewed in their dynamic relationship with the environment (see Dugger 1984). Such interconnectedness is difficult to reconcile with an explanatory model based on an abstract analogy to processes of change in the biological sphere, for example, the genotype - phenotype distinction. Moreover, Veblen's model does not imply a direct application of the Darwinian principles of variation, inheritance, and selection and their domain-specific contents to institutional evolution." Whereas the approach of the continuity hypothesis is consistent with Veblen's Darwin-inspired notions of an evolutionary economics and provides a modern analytical framework for an understanding of the mechanisms of cultural, institutional, and technological evolution.

As argued before, many evolutionary approaches to economic development wrongly take a mechanism that is specific for the domain of biological evolution namely natural selection - as a general, domain-unspecific principle of all kinds of evolutionary processes. What is more, in regards to the cultural diffusion phenomena including the resulting co-evolution of institutions, firms, and technology, the role of the selection metaphor is not clear. The selection concepts of many analogy constructions in economics are very vague and do not clearly specify the concrete processes that establish the operation of cultural selection. More concrete findings concerning cultural diffusion processes based on social- cognitive learning can be provided without referring to analogy constructions. Also in this domain, there are differences regarding the differential dissemination of single novelties. Material hypotheses about the influences of biologically evolved cognitive dispositions on, for example, the likelihood of an adoption of new ways of behavior or the substitution of existing behaviors by the agents can be given (see e.g., Henrich and Boyd 1998; Richerson and Boyd 2005, 69). No explanatory power is gained by labeling these processes with the domain-specific term "natural selection."

In regards to cultural diffusion, biological evolution has, in accordance with the continuity hypothesis and Veblen's approach, created the cognitive basis for cultural evolution with its own modes of transmission that are fundamentally different from biological forms of inheritance (for a detailed exposition see Cordes 2004): during human phytogeny, humans adapted for culture in ways other primates did not. Biologically evolved forms of social cognition and cultural learning are the basis for cultural evolution (Tomasello 1999b). In the context of Veblen's model, habituation takes place under the conditioning influence of the material circumstances that reflect the existing accumulated technological knowledge and that direct the way people think, learn, and act. Moreover, habits of thought are supported by social sanction and are passed on through processes of socialization (Veblen 1914, 7).14 All of these processes are based on humans' sophisticated forms of intergenerational cultural learning.

Cultural learning allows for fidelity of transmission of behaviors and information among the members of a population not feasible in genetic transmission (see Kruger, Ratner, and Tomasello 1993). Due to these powerful forms of social cognition, human beings are able to learn from one another in a very effective way. Cultural learning also enables humans to accumulate a multitude of modifications in the course of socio-economic evolution and to pool collective cognitive resources both contemporaneously and over historical time. By means of cumulative cultural evolution - central to Veblen's concept of institutional change - modifications to a material artifact or a way of behaving, contributed by one agent or a group of individuals, stay in place until some future individual or individuals deliver further refinements, which again remain in existence until yet another instance of progress occurs.15 These processes of cultural transmission are biased (see Richerson and Boyd 2005), for example, by Veblen's instinct of workmanship, giving rise to recurrent patterns in cultural evolution (Cordes 2005b).

Humans are capable of collaborative learning, i.e., cultural creation or coconstruction, which enhances the individual inventiveness (see e.g., Veblen 1919, 28). Moreover, they not only have to be inventive but also capable of preserving those inventions by imitatively learning as well as explicitly teaching the acquirements of others. Given these cultural processes, Veblen wrote the following passages:

This apparatus of ways and means available for the pursuit of whatever may be worth seeking is, substantially all, a matter of tradition out of the past, a legacy of habits of thought accumulated through the experience of past generations. (1914, 6-7)

The ways and means, material and immaterial, by which the native proclivities work out their ends, therefore, are forever in process of change, being conditioned by the changes cumulatively going forward in the institutional fabric of habitual elements that governs the scheme of life. (1914, 19)

Humans do have some species-unique modes of cultural transmission that preserve cultural content and are very different from biological modes of inheritance. Natural evolution is driven by newly emerging genetic variants and their selective diffusion or inheritance processes, whereas the driving forces of cultural evolution lie in the dynamics of individual and collective human learning or transmission processes, giving rise to a qualitatively different kind and much faster pace of evolutionary change (Witt 2003, 17). Such a sustainable learning process can be observed in the evolution of technology (see Cordes 2004). With regard to tool- use and its diffusion, both prominent topics in Veblen's work (see e.g., 1899, 20; 1919, 477-85), the process of cultural transmission is of salient importance. The unique human capability of consciously differentiating between goals and means serves to identify the method or strategy of tool-use as an independent behavioral entity (see Tomasello 1999b). Thereby, humans realized that naturefacts could be changed in shape to obtain one-component artifacts or compound forms of them. Moreover, such a notion of intentionality is a basis for tool behavior that is qualitatively different from tool behavior that rests upon or results from instinctive behavior and the genetic adaptation process by means of natural selection. The unique human cognitive capability to understand the intentionality of other individuals provides the basis for an essential feature of human-made evolution: the development of more and more complex technological appliances for productive purposes and their institutional repercussions, which is the central theme of Veblen's Instinct of Workmanship (1914) and other works (e.g., 1919, 324-34 and 481-82). Veblen accounted for this cumulative character of technological advancement:

A given contrivance for effecting certain material ends becomes a circumstance which affects the further growth of habits of thought - habituated methods of procedure - and so becomes a point of departure for further development of the methods of compassing the ends sought and for the further variation of ends that are sought to be compassed. (1898b, 412)

The driving forces of cultural evolutionary change involve human cog\nition, wants, and creativity. Human endeavors motivate the search for novelty as argued in Veblen's instinct-based theory of human agency. To understand the generation of variety in the cultural realm, these motivational underpinnings of human creative behavior - the crucial driving force of cultural evolution and essential for its causal explanation (see Hodgson 2004b) - need to be analyzed.16 In this context, the internal make-up of agents has to be addressed explicitly as well as their creative agency, i.e., the evolutionary approach has to open the black box of the individual as has been suggested by Veblen's instinct-based theory. Moreover, cultural novelties emerge in the minds of individual agents and they have functions before they are actually expressed. With respect to the evaluation of novelty, the human mind is capable of suppressing meaningless novelty and of evaluating the significance of others ex ante, whereas each genetic novelty is physically expressed by biochemical processes and evaluated by natural selection ex post (Witt 2005). The human mind can intuitively grasp the meaning of novelty. Combined with the cultural modes of diffusion, i.e., various forms of learning, these aspects are the reasons cultural change has outpaced genetic change, and why cultural change departs from genetic interests.

Social-cognitive learning (see Bandura 1986, chap. 2) is the crucial element in the diffusion of cultural contents, however, the latter are subject to biased transmission (see Richerson and Boyd 2005). For example, Cordes (2005b, 2005c) has shown that humans' evolved cognitive dispositions that contribute to the (biased) transmission of cultural contents can serve as a starting-point for an evolutionary theory of institutional change. Veblen has argued that instincts - in this context especially his instinct of workmanship - focus attention on specific ends and cultural contents. Human evolutionary past still biases deliberation, perception, and choice. For example, certain natural psychological susceptibilities to particular stimuli due to innate psychological dispositions provide a link between human cognitive abilities and the development of cultural representations. Referring to the effect of his instinct of workmanship, Veblen (1914, 35) stated: "By cumulative habituation a bias of this character may come to have very substantial consequences for the range and scope of technological knowledge, the state of the industrial arts, and for the rate and direction of growth in workmanlike ideals."

Indeed, as is evidenced by insights from modern cognitive science (for a detailed exposition see Cordes 2005b), there are specialized psychological mechanisms that have evolved during human phytogeny to solve cognitive problems linked to making and using tools, as well as learning how to apply tools, for example, via observation. These mechanisms show considerable content sensitivity in this realm and thus play a role in directing attentional processes. In this way, these cognitive dispositions partly govern whether information will be subject to profound contemplation, whether it will be easy to disseminate within a population, and whether it may be an input to creative activity.17 Such a bias influences culturally engendered and institutionalized attitudes toward, for example, productive and useful work, the compliance with certain cultural norms, or the aesthetic sense for an appreciation of skill and dexterity. Veblen's instinct of workmanship comprises the pleasure derived out of working and a sense of merit in serviceable and efficient activity. Moreover, these processes influence the continuous accretion of knowledge during cultural evolution and can produce a systematic tendency in qualitative economic change. In this context, Darwin's theory of evolution is again relevant as far as it explains the origins of these cognitive dispositions as it is suggested by the continuity hypothesis.

Veblen's theory of the evolution of institutions is conditioned by the material circumstances and by the innate dispositions and propensities of human nature (1914, 18; 1919, 477-85). His theory of hereditary traits - consisting of a set of instincts - applies to human biological evolution and is intertwined with cultural evolution. Veblen clearly stated that human endowment of instincts and their capability of passing on cultural contents are a result of natural selection during human phylogeny. However, his approach does not amount to the development of an abstract analogy to the biological realm. A concept consistent with Veblen's demands on an evolutionary science in economics, such as the continuity hypothesis, would emphasize the biologically evolved foundations of learning and reasoning that directly enable and affect the unique forms of humans' cultural evolution. Darwin's explanatory model of biological evolution is well suited to scrutinize the natural origins of these capabilities, while it is ill suited to explain the dynamics of cultural evolution based on humans' evolved cognitive set-up. Veblen's understanding of cultural evolution - the cumulative growth and change of habits of thought - does not lend itself to an analogy construction.

Conclusions

The desire to draw biological concepts into the explanation of social affairs is hard to understand since for the most part they add to rather than subtract from the difficulties of understanding social institutions. (Penrose 1952, 818)

An important issue in contemporary theory development in economics concerns the relationship between the two disciplines of economics and biology. Veblen's approach to economics has gained new attention in the light of this conceptual and methodological debate. He has well noticed that the differences between the way evolution works in nature and the way cultural evolution proceeds are significant. One example is the process of natural selection in the biological sphere compared to the imitative knowledge diffusion process in the economic realm that is based upon forms of cultural learning. Many reasons have been presented in this paper that show why metaphors from, and analogy constructions to, the domain of biology are not as useful as many of their proponents claim. Universal Darwinism, for example, even claims the same principles for natural and economic evolution, i.e., these principles take on some of biological evolution's domain-specificity. In contrast, the approach of the continuity hypothesis and Veblen's understanding of economics as an evolutionary science put evolved cognitive dispositions, cultural learning processes, and human creativity at center stage without falling back on analogy constructions.

Due to differences between the principles of evolutionary biology and economics, even very abstract analogies between these domains are unlikely to hold (Cordes 2006). It may be tempting to circumvent all these complications by proposing even more abstract versions of Darwin's theories, but these models will lose their logical coherence and explanatory power. However, biologically evolved foundations of learning and reasoning directly enable and affect cultural evolution (see Veblen 1898b). Darwinian theories of evolution are suited to explain the natural origins of, for example, human learning, intentionality, and deliberative behavior, as well as the lasting influence of certain evolved cognitive traits, but they are ill suited to grasp the cumulative dynamics of cultural evolution based on these evolved cognitive capabilities. With respect to certain characteristics of an initial phase of culture, Veblen (1899, 220) said, "less dubious evidence of its existence is to be found in psychological survivals, in the way of persistent and pervading traits of human character."

An evolutionary approach to economics that invokes, for example, the concept of natural selection as analogy and that implies that the actual process of "economic natural selection" is identical or similar to Darwinian selection in biology disregards the fundamental differences between both spheres. As shown in this paper, there is hardly such a thing as "economic natural (Darwinian) selection." The selection principles of biological and cultural evolution differ decisively. Hence, it is problematic to use Darwin's concept of natural selection as an analogy to processes of economic selection and cultural diffusion or to mimic the causal structure of neoDarwinian theory in economics. As a consequence, Veblen's (1898b) call for theories capable of explaining causal relations, quantitative sequences, and cumulative causation in economic phenomena is not met by these approaches.

Instead, this paper has suggested the adoption of a perspective relying on concepts based on the continuity hypothesis and consistent with Veblenian thinking: natural evolution has shaped the ground and still defines the constraints for humanmade, or cultural evolution (Witt 2004; 2003, 15-6). The observation that the ontological basis of biological and cultural evolution is related - thereby establishing continuity between these two spheres - allows an application of Darwinian concepts to account for the emergence of culture and its own forms of evolution. The economist has to provide domain-specific theories for the economic realm not guided by a general Darwinian framework - as a universal metatheory - but that take into account the evolved cognitive and physical dispositions of agents and the constraints imposed on economic evolution by biological evolution.

Veblen's instinct-based theory of human behavior addressed issues of cognition, motivation, creativity, and the interaction of instinctive motivations and intentional behavior. In doing so, Veblen relied on insights of contemporary cognitive sciences and refrained from constructing any kind of analogy to the biological sphere. Although many evolutionary economists claim Veblen \is one of the crucial founders of their field of research, his approach to an evolutionary economics is very different than many of the contemporary approaches that rely on the import of biological concepts to economics in the form of abstract analogies.

Notes

1. For example, the ones expounded in Hodgson (2004a, chap. 6) and Edgell and Tilman (1989). It is partly different from those in Harris (1934).

2. This section's line of argument, in part, draws on Cordes (2006).

3. There are two kinds of selection: first, there is natural selection for general viability that improves adaptedness and second, there is sexual selection, both leading to greater reproductive success (Mayr 1991, 164). As shown in this section, it is problematic to talk about "natural selection" in the cultural sphere, as done by Knudsen (2002) for example, who uses the term "economic natural selection." The second kind of selection is definitely hard to identify in cultural evolution.

4. Loasby (2002) states that the processes of variety-generation and selection are deeply intertwined rather than separated; the interdependence of both variety-generation and selection at various levels is an important feature of human history.

5. Given the fact that routines are considered to play a role at different levels of an organization, additional conceptual problems emerge when constructing an analogy to the genotype and phenotype in biological evolution.

6. Artifacts with similar purposes, for instance, can be designed to very different specifications and chosen for very different reasons (Ziman 2000, 7).

7. The term "Universal Darwinism" has been coined by Dawkins (1983).

8. The author takes a position different from the one Hodgson develops here and in his book The Evolution of Institutional Economics (2004a, part III), where he claims the Veblenian approach involves the extension of the core Darwinian concepts to socio- economic entities.

9. Most biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists today assume that natural selection is no longer a source of systematic change of the genetic endowment of humankind (see e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1980; Tomasello 1999a; Mayr 2001, 261-62). Hence, the basic genetic endowment of humans is very similar to the one in place by the time natural selection stopped exerting a systematic influence on the human genome.

10. A referee made me aware of a statement by Stephen Gould on that point: "Human cultural evolution proceeds along paths outstandingly different from the ways of genetic change. Biologists believe that genetic change is primarily Darwinian - that is, it occurs via natural selection operating upon undirected variation. Human cultural evolution is Lamatckian - the useful discoveries of one generation are passed directly to offspring by writing, teaching, and so forth" (1987, 70).

11. While formal institutions - whereby institutions are defined as the recurrent coordination of individual interactions - are deliberately conceived and implemented, informal institutions can emerge as a consequence of repeated human action, not involving conscious human design (see e.g., Smith 1993; Hayek 1967, 66-70). Nevertheless, these institutions may subsequently be subject to deliberate considerations.

12. Veblen's notions of "instincts" refer to the state of psychology at his time and contrast with the modern ethological understanding of "instincts." His concept of instincts is more akin to what modern cognitive scientists call "psychological dispositions," "cognitive mechanisms," or "cognitive devices."

13. For a contrary view see Hodgson (2001; 2004b), who argues that Veblen intended to directly apply these principles to institutional change. However, given the causal structure of Veblen's model, it is not clear how the Darwinian principles could fit in without losing their explanatory power (for more details on this problem see Cordes 2006).

14. Boyd and Richerson (1982) call this effect "conformity transmission." It is an essential aspect in their famous dual inheritance theory.

15. In a similar manner, Loasby (2002) argues that there are biologically evolved capabilities and motivations of human beings underlying the process of knowledge generation. What is more, he claims an understanding of these capabilities and motivations, rather than ttansfetable models, is evolutionary biology's prime contribution to the study of economic evolution.

16. For example, Cordes (2005a) shows how an evolved want to avoid physical effort beyond a variable individual level of adaptation can be considered a source of human technological creativity. Aversive stimuli resulting from physical activity beyond an individual's adaptation level can be avoided by the utilization of services provided by tools, implements, and machinery. Thus, one motivation for employing these devices is the satisfaction of the want to avoid excessive physical activity. The paper shows how this basic want and the corresponding behaviors have evolved during human phylogeny. With respect to explaining the origins of the psychophysiological basis of this want, Darwin's model of evolution is directly relevant, but it does not explain the character or fate of the emerging novelty. This way of proceeding accords with the approach brought forward by the continuity hypothesis.

17. Mayr (1991, 157) also argues that there is a genetic propensity for accepting and maintaining certain cultural prescriptions once favored by natural selection.

References

Alexander, Richard D. "Evolution, Culture, and Human Behavior: Some General Considerations." In Natural Selection and Social Behavior, edited by R. D. Alexander, and D. W. Tinkle, 509-520. New York: Chiron Press, 1981.

Asso, Pier F., and Luca Fiorito. "Human Nature and Economic Institutions: Instinct Psychology, Behaviorism, and the Development of American Institutionalism." Journal of the History of Economic Thought 26, no. 4 (2004): 445-477.

Bandura, Albert. Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1986.

Becker, Markus C. "Organizational Routines: A Review of the Literature." Industrial and Corporate Change 13, no. 4 (2004): 643- 677.

Becker, Markus C., Nathalie Lazaric, Richard R. Nelson, and Sidney G. Winter. "Applying Organizational Routines in Understanding Organizational Change." Industrial and Corporate Change 14, no. 5 (2005): 775-791.

Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. "Sociobiology, Culture and Economic Theory." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 1, no. 2 (1980): 97-121.

____. "Cultural Transmission and the Evolution of Cooperative Behavior." Human Ecology 10, no. 3 (1982): 325-351.

Commons, John R. Institutional Economics. New York: Macmillan, 1934.

Cordes, Christian. "The Human Adaptation for Culture and its Behavioral Implications." Journal of Bioeconomics 6, no. 2 (2004): 143-163.

____. "Long-term Tendencies in Technological Creativity: A Preference-based Approach." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 15 (2005a): 149-168.

____. "Veblen's 'Instinct of Workmanship,' its Cognitive Foundations, and Some Implications for Economic Theory." Journal of Economic issues 39, no. 1 (2005b): 1-20.

____0. "What Orientation for Interpreting Veblen? A Rejoinder to Baldwin Ranson." Journal of Economic Issues 39, no. 4 (2005c): 1065- 1069.

____. "Darwinism in Economics: From Analogy to Continuity." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 16, no. 5 (2006): 529-541.

Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection. London: J. Murray, 1859.

Dawkins, Richard. "Universal Darwinism." In Evolution from Molecules to Men, edited by D. S. Bendall, 403425. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Dosi, Giovanni, and Richard R. Nelson. "An Introduction to Evolutionary Theories in Economics." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 4 (1994): 153-172.

Dugger, William M. 'Veblen and Kropotkin on Human Evolution." Journal of Economic Issues 18, no. 4 (1984): 971-985.

Edgell, Stephen, and Rick Tilman. 'The Intellectual Antecedents of Thorstein Veblen: A Reappraisal." Journal of Economic Issues 23, no. 4 (1989): 1003-1026.

Gould, Stephen J. "The Ghost of Protagoras." In An Urchin in the Storm, edited by S. J. Gould, 62-72. New York: Norton, 1987.

Harris, Abram L. "Economic Evolution: Dialectical and Darwinian." Journal of Political Economy 42, no. 1 (1934): 34-79.

Hayek, Friedrich A. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

Henrich, Joseph, and Robert Boyd. "The Evolution of Conformist Transmission and the Emergence of Between-Group Differences." Evolution and Human Behavior 19 (1998); 215-241.

Hodgson, Geoffrey M. "Darwin, Veblen and the Problem of Causality in Economics." History and Philosophy of Life Sciences 23 (2001): 385-423.

____. "Darwinism in Economics: From Analogy to Ontology." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 12 (2002): 259-281.

____. 'The Mystery of the Routine: The Darwinian Destiny of an Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change." Revue Economique 54, no. 2 (2003): 355-384.

____. The Evolution of Institutional Economics. London: Routledge, 2004a.

____. "Veblen and Darwinism." International Review of Sociology 14, no. 3 (2004b): 343-361.

Hodgson, Geoffrey M., and Thorbjrn Knudsen. "Why We Need a Generalized Darwinism, and Why Generalized Darwinism is Not Enough." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 61, no. 1 (2006): 1-19.

Khalil, Elias L. "Neo-classical Economics and Neo-Darwinism: Clearing the Way for Historical Thinking." In Economics and Biology, edited by G. M. Hodgson, 548-598. Aldershot: Edward Edgar, 1995.

Knudsen, Thorbjrn. "Economic Selection Theory." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 12 (2002): 443-470.

____. "General Selection Theory and Economic Evolution: The Price Equation and the Replicator/ Interactor Distinction." Journal of Economic Methodology 11, no. 2 (2004): 147-173.

Kruger, Ann C., Hilary H. Ratner, and Michael Tomasello. "Cultural Learning." Behaviora\l and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 495- 552.

Lewontin, Richard. The Units of Selection." Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1 (1970): 1-18.

Loasby, Brian J. 'The Evolution of Knowledge: Beyond the Biological Model." Research Policy 31, no. 8-9 (2002): 1227-1239.

Mayr, Ernst. One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modem Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

____. What Evolution is. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Murphree, Idus. "Darwinism in Thorstein Veblen's Economics." Social Research 26, no. 1/4 (1959): 311-324.

Nelson, Richard R. "Recent Evolutionary Theorizing about Economic Change." Journal of Economic Literature 23 (1995): 48-90.

Nelson, Richard R., and Sidney G. Winter. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982.

Penrose, Edith T. "Biological Analogies in the Theory of the Firm." American Economic Review 42, no. 5 (1952): 804-819.

Price, George R. The Nature of Selection." Journal of Theoretical Biology 175 (1995): 389-396.

Richerson, Peter J., and Robert Boyd. Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Rutherford, Malcolm. "Thorstein Veblen and the Process of Institutional Change." History of Political Economy 16, no. 3 (1984): 331-348.

____. "Veblen's Evolutionary Programme: A Promise Unfulfilled." Cambridge Journal of Economics 22 (1998): 463-477.

Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Economy as a Whole - Seventh Chapter of the Theory of Economic Development." industry and innovation 9, no. 1/2 (2002): 93-145.

Singer, Wolf. "Response Synchronization: A Universal Coding Strategy for the Definition of Relations." In The New Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by M. S. Gazzaniga, 325-338. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2000.

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Tomasello, Michael. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. London: Harvard University Press, 1999a.

____. "The Human Adaptation for Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999b): 509-529.

Twomey, Paul. "Reviving Veblenian Economic Psychology." Cambridge Journal of Economics 22 (1998): 433448.

Veblen, Thorstein B. The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor." American Journal of Sociology IV, no. 2 (1898a): 187-201.

____. "Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?" Quarterly Journal of Economics 12 (1898b): 373-397.

____. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. New York: Macmillan, 1899.

____. The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of the industrial Arts. New York: Macmillan, 1914.

____. The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays. New York: Huebsch, 1919.

Vromen, Jack. The Human Agent in Evolutionary Economics." In Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics, edited by J. Laurent, and J. Nightingale, 184-208. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2001.

____. "Conjectural Revisionary Economic Ontology: Outline of an Ambitious Research Agenda for Evolutionary Economics." Journal of Economic Methodology 11, no. 2 (2004): 213-247.

Witt, Ulrich. "Bioeconomics as Economics from a Darwinian Perspective." Journal of Bioeconomics 1 (1999): 19-34.

____. "Changing Cognitive Frames - Changing Organizational Forms: An Entrepreneurial Theory of Organizational Development." Industrial and Corporate Change 9, no. 4 (2000): 733-755.

____ "How Evolutionary is Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development?" Industry and Innovation 9, no. 1/2 (2002): 7-22.

____. The Evolving Economy . Essays on the Evolutional} Approach to Economics. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003.

____. "On the Proper Interpretation of 'Evolution' in Economics and its Implications for Production Theory." Journal of Economic Methodology 11, no. 2 (2004): 125-146.

____. "On Novelty and Heterogeneity." In Nonlinear Dynamics and Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, edited by T. Lux, S. Reitz, and E. Samanidou, 123-138. Heidelberg: Springer, 2005.

Witt, Ulrich, and Christian Cordes. "Selection, Learning, and Schumpeterian Dynamics - A Conceptual Debate." In The Elgar Companion to Neo-Schumpeterian Economics, edited by H. Hanusch, and A. Pyka. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2006, forthcoming.

Ziman, John. "Evolutionary Models for Technological Change." In Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process, edited by J. Ziman, 3-12. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

The author is a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California at Davis. He acknowledges generous support from the Max Planck institute of Economics, Jena, Germany, and art anonymous referee's helpful comments.

Copyright Association for Evolutionary Economics Mar 2007

(c) 2007 Journal of Economic Issues. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.