Understanding of Evolution in Economics and Hypothesis of Ontological Continuity
The "Continuity Hypothesis" (CH) provides an ontological basis for evolutionary economics. Witt’s concept is influenced by Darwinian theories insofar as it stresses the importance of cognitive and social dispositions acquired by early humans during natural, biological evolution. Innate dispositions of this kind are seen as substantially influencing human behavior in an economic context. However, CH places emphasis on the fact that evolutionary processes driving the economy rely on mechanisms different from those underlying biological evolution. The form of evolution relevant for economics is cultural evolution, which, in Witt’s view, is Non-Darwinian and cannot be explained by abstract “Darwinian principles”. Cultural evolution is based on humans’ cognitive apparatus as an outcome of biological evolution, but is governed by distinct and idiosyncratic mechanisms. Therefore, Witt is skeptical about the use of biological analogies in explaining the evolution of the economy. Important Non-Darwinian mechanisms include individual and social learning, the diffusion of knowledge, and the creation of variance through human creativity and imagination. These are the driving forces of socio-economic dynamics that manifest themselves in a process of self-organization. In Witt’s opinion, the role of natural selection in cultural evolution becomes negligible due to the immense increase in pace of evolutionary change and the huge reproductive success of the human species - supported by the evolution of cultural institutions. Thus, the “connection between natural and man-made evolution resolves into an ... indirect one” (Witt 2003, p. 17). In the light of CH, long term economic change is no longer mainly an optimization problem of economizing on scarce resources. Rather, economic evolution today is driven by cumulative knowledge generation and problem solving, guided by learning, insight and intentionality as well as the successive emergence of new problems. In this respect, Witt sees his CH in the tradition of Thorstein Veblen, while it is “somewhat different from, but not incompatible with, the neo-Schumpeterian approach” (Witt 2003, p. 18).
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