EVOLUTIONARY
ECONOMICS
by
the complete text of Kenneth Boulding's Evolutionary Economics (1981)
Prologue
Introduction
Biological Evolution
Basic Evolutionary Model
Commodities as an Evolutionary System
Evolutionary and "Mainline" Economics
Evolutionary Approach to Economic History
Economics of Energy and Entropy in Evolutionary Perspective
Policy Implications of Evolutionary Economics
Epilogue
Options:
first published online on 11th
February 2009
Evolutionary
Economics is a way of looking at the great complexity of
economic and social life in terms of the fundamental concepts of ecological
interaction and mutation. It sees commodities, for example, as species in the
changing social and economic ecosystem.
Kenneth
Boulding carefully explains such evolutionary
concepts as energy and entropy with respect to economics, concluding with a
discussion of the prospects of an evolutionary approach for bettering human
conditions. At the same time, an elegant history of economic thought is
provided, as Boulding traces his ideas back to Adam Smith, Malthus, and the
classical (essentially evolutionary) economists - and predicts the end of the ‘Newtonian’
thinking of the last 100 years.
Boulding describes
his dynamic model with charm, clarity, and vivid imagery that will fascinate
students and professional economists alike. Evolutionary Economics will
also provide provocative reading for a broad range of social theorists and
social science historians.
Kenneth E.
Boulding, the author of Evolutionary Economics, is
one of the magisterial figures in the field of social science. The recipient of
thirty honorary degrees and a variety of other awards, he has served as
president of six major scholarly societies and taught at universities in seven
countries. His hundreds of articles and pamphlets cover a broad range of
topics, and he has written over thirty books, including the widely discussed Ecodynamics.[1]
With his wife Elise, he was a pioneer in the field of peace and conflict
research.[2]
At the time Evolutionary
Economics was published in 1981 Boulding was Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at the
Kenneth Boulding
was concerned that his thinking on evolutionary economics should not find
itself misunderstood and used as political ideology the way social darwinism had been a hundred
years earlier.[3] Here is what he had to say on the subject:
We
should not leave the general subject of the evolutionary perspective without a
brief glance at the movement of thought in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries that went by the name of Social Darwinism. This was indeed an attempt to apply the
evolutionary perspective, as it practitioners saw it, to social systems. It is
particularly associated with the name of Herbert Spencer in the
Endnotes
[1] Back in the
1980s I had the privilege of being part of a small group who attended a talk by
Kenneth Boulding...it may have been at a World Game workshop at the University
of Colorado in 1982. I can still see the flowing white hair, the twinkle
in the eye, and hear the laughter as Boulding staggered round the room
grappling with his enormous imaginary balloon...his visual metaphor for the Real
Economy. You push in there and it pops out there. The best you can hope
for is to keep hold of the damn thing!
[2] It was from
Elise that I first encountered the idea of the two-hundred year human life
span...from the birth of the oldest person alive to the death of the youngest.
Joanna Macey adopts a similar thought when she reminds her audiences that the
American Indians' would always ask themselves the question: how will this turn
out seven generations hence?
[3] The Last
Stand of William Jennings Bryan by William Shepherd.
URL:
http://www.cesc.net/adobeweb/scholars/shepherd/laststand.pdf.