TY - JOUR
T1 - Darwinism, causality and the social sciences
AU - Hodgson, G.
N1 - Original article can be found at: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713704064 Copyright Taylor and Francis/ Informa
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Recently the degree to which ‘evolutionary economics’ does or should involve Darwinian principles has come under debate. This essay builds on previous arguments that Darwinism has a potentially wide application to socio-economic evolution, which does not involve biological reductionism. It is argued that at the core of Darwinism are presuppositions concerning causality and causal explanation. Contrary to widespread belief, these presuppositions do not downgrade or ignore human intentionality: they simply require that it too is in principle subject to causal explanation. Neither are these presuppositions ‘deterministic’ or ‘mechanistic’, at least by some prominent meanings of these terms. Furthermore, the presupposition of causal determination does not necessarily exclude or include stochastic or probabilistic determination.
AB - Recently the degree to which ‘evolutionary economics’ does or should involve Darwinian principles has come under debate. This essay builds on previous arguments that Darwinism has a potentially wide application to socio-economic evolution, which does not involve biological reductionism. It is argued that at the core of Darwinism are presuppositions concerning causality and causal explanation. Contrary to widespread belief, these presuppositions do not downgrade or ignore human intentionality: they simply require that it too is in principle subject to causal explanation. Neither are these presuppositions ‘deterministic’ or ‘mechanistic’, at least by some prominent meanings of these terms. Furthermore, the presupposition of causal determination does not necessarily exclude or include stochastic or probabilistic determination.
U2 - 10.1080/13501780410001694118
DO - 10.1080/13501780410001694118
M3 - Article
SN - 1350-178X
VL - 11
JO - Journal of Economic Methodology
JF - Journal of Economic Methodology
IS - 2
ER -