I’ve noticed that some of the writers featured on LRC are non-evolutionists. Rockwell himself doesn’t seem to take a position on biological evolution in anything I’ve read of his. Rothbard seems to be silent on the matter. I think I’ve run across a few remarks by Mises that suggest he accepted the idea of biological evolution. Hoppe has made many remarks that indicate he accepts an old universe and biological evolution. Some of the contributors to the Mises daily are Roman Catholic, which indicates that they might hold to evolutionary biology - since JPII sanctioned it, it’s no longer a conflict of conscience for RCs to hold to it.
It seems to me that praxeology, as a discipline, must take into account not only the physical but also the biological facts about man. Is AE silent on biological evolution? Or does it explicitly embrace evolution? Or does it implicitly embrace evolution but treats it as a separate discipline? Or none of the above?
As both a theist and an evolutionist, I would say Austrian economics and evolution are part of seperate sciences, but I do think it’s fascinating to compare the process of natural selection with the process of active market selection and how both, though different in mechanism, one possessing a will and one an unthinking process of luck and diligence, produce superior products.
Because it at the very least informs our decision making, and depending on how determinist you want to get might lend some inevitability to certain decisions. For example: old people and sweets. Ever notice there’s barely a geezer without some kind of hard candy in his pocket or in the house, certainly within easy reach somehow? There’s actually a reason for it, it’s that as we get old our ability to smell and thus taste degrades and the finer points of complex tastes are lost to the basics of sweet, sour, salty. And old coots generally tend to gravitate toward one, usually sweet, which is why granny always had a boatload of hard caramels or cough drops, etc. I personally don’t think evolution trumps free will, but it certainly informs our decision making processes.
And businesses take advantage of it too, especially at the marketing end. Businesses invest tons of resources into figuring out behaviors and marketing upon them. One that applies equally to the police as well as retailers: people tend to turn right more than left. When cops lose sight of someone in a chase and circumstances allow for a left or a right, chances are higher they went right. When people walk into stores, they also tend to go right, which is usually where you’ll find the most expensive, fattest margin stuff.
At the very least there may be some evolution/biological origination for the tendency of many people to favor command and control rather than laissez faire when it comes to government. Perhaps an adaptation to small group living in which such command and control approaches are practicable because there’s barely any resources to coordinate. Which would suck because it would likely mean no serious movement toward genuine free markets until enough people ‘get it’ on a cellular level so to speak.
Also evolution offers insights into domestication, where generally speaking it’s thought man didn’t go out and find cows, dogs, cats, etc. and bring them home and proceed to domesticate them. What’s more likely is as we developed these animals developed with us, cows probably taking a liking to cultivated fields as a food source, cats probably taking a liking to the rodents and smaller animals that came with the same fields, not to mention closer quarters living in more built up places, and dogs for hunting and other reasons. I don’t know if there’s a “shit happens” school of capitalism which offers that as the impetus behind some developments, but it’s a strong possibility that the entire pet industry finds its roots in the beginings of agriculture.
Why should that matter to economists who merely study the systems? Libertarians may want to know why laissez-faire is not preferred to command economies, but as an economist the preferences of individuals - resulting as they do from biology - are inconsequential in their capacity as a scientist.
Evolution is a system of change. Economics is a system of change. Yes, it happens on another level but understanding of the one helps in the understanding of the other.
Could you elaborate, please? I have no strong opinion on this but, at first thought, it would seem that a praxeology built around a “pigeons act” axiom – one focused on pigeon action – would be somewhat different from one studying human action.
Maybe, but that doesn’t apply to evolution alone then. Mises would agree considering the number of disciplines he considered an economist should be versed in. But strictly speaking it’s neither here nor there insofar as pure economics is concerned except for giving useful analogies of how market systems work.
In the back of “The Machinery of Freedom” by David Friedman, Appendix 2, he provides some short comments about some books, one of which is very interesting and also somewhat related to this thread.
[quote=“David Friedman, “The Machinery of Freedom”, Appendix 2”]
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976). An explanation of evolutionary biology and sociobiology–the economics of genes. One of the most interesting books I have read in recent years.
I’m supposed to be working right now, so I don’t have time to fully go into it, but if pigeons could economize, then all the theorems of praxeology would apply to them just as much as to humans. The accidental material phenomena that happen to give rise to action is immaterial to praxeology. Praxeology deals with action as such, not the origins of action.
I agree with others in here that praxeology as such need not have anything to do with biology.
But than again, I’d find the intellectual capabilities of a guy who rejects evolution seriously wanting. I would hardly lend this guy an eager ear when it comes to walking uncharted paths in AE, not merely applying what Mises already said.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, as I do not consider myself exactly the hioghest authority on this, but as far as I know the theist position is that, according to the Old Testament, God made people some 10’000 years ago, and nothing before existed. I find that view hard to reconcile with…anything I know. A theist accepting evolution as a process, albeit a designed process, would be seriously deviating form holy writ.
The whole premise behind “Intelligent design” theorists is that biology per se is not rejected. It just claims that the complexity of living organisms need not require an evolutionary process. In fact, they pretend to refute it by “scientific” means. As an alternative, they suggest that a Creator could have designed all that you see around you.