Sociobiology and Bioeconomics The Theory of Evolution in Biological and Economic Theory

About this book

The theory of evolution and Neo-Darwinian biological theory extend their analysis in sociobiology from the life sciences and the animal societies to human societies. Sociobiology as a unifying theory of the social interaction within and between species has led to an integration of economic analysis into biology. The economy of nature has become the subject of bioeconomics which in turn transferred biological analysis to the human economy. Evolution, competition, selection, and cooperation are phenomena common to the economy of nature and human economy. The inclusion of economic and cultural theory in evolution theory raises the question whether the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis with its exclusive concern with somatic heredity is able to incorporate developmental systems of the human economy and of cultural heredity. A new synthesis of the natural and the social sciences is in the making.

Contents

PREFACE
Peter Koslowski: Sociobiology, Theory of Evolution, and Bioeconomics - Introduction

PART I: NEO-DARWINIAN SYNTHESIS, SOCIOBIOLOGY, AND THE ECONOMY OF NATURE
1. Michael T. Ghiselin: Darwinian Monism: The Economy of Nature
2. Tim Clutton-Brock and Geoff A. Parker: Coercion
3. Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew: Does the Second Law of Thermodynamics Refute the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis?

PART II: NATURAL SELECTION AND DEVELOPMENT SYSTEMS: REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN GENETIC AND NON-GENETIC FACTORS OF EVOLUTION
4. Susan Oyama: Evolutionary and Developmental Formation: Politics of the Boundary
5. Eva M. Neumann-Held: The Gene is Dead - Long Live the Gene! Conceptualizing Genes the Constructionist Way

PART III:REDRAWING THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN THE NARRATIVES OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND THE NARRATIVES OF HERMENEUTICS, MYTHOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY
6. Sergey V. Chebanov: The Role of Hermeneutics in Biology
7. Jacques Vauthier: Science and Mythology: a New 'metaxu'?
8. Aloys Hüttermann: What is the Impact of a Philosophically Based Criticism of Socio-Biology on the Scientific Community?
9. Hermann Haken: Synergetics in Sociology and Biology
10. Hans-Dieter Görtz: Symbiosis, Mutualism and Cooperation in Biological Evolution

PART V: EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY AND ECONOMIC THEORY
11. Mae-Wan Ho: Are Economic Systems Like Organisms?
12. Peter T. Saunders: Darwinism and Economic Theory
13. Ulrich Witt: Evolutionary Economics and Evolutionary Biology

CONCLUSION
14. Peter Koslowski: The Theory of Evolution as Sociobiology and Bioeconomics: A Critique of Its Claim to Universality

LIST OF AUTHORS
INDEX OF NAMES

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