Are economic systems like organisms?

Mae-Wan Ho

pp. 237-258

in: Peter Koslowski (ed), Sociobiology and bioeconomics, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

Hodgson (1993) and Ormerod (1994) are the latest among a string of economists to declare their own discipline "in crisis' within the past 15 years. And like the others before them, they trace the crisis to the mechanistic foundations of modern western science itself. They call for an alternative, organicist approach to economics. Precisely the same critique of neo(classical) Darwinian theory of evolution has been taking place since the 1970s (see Saunders, and Oyama, this volume; Ho/Saunders 1984; Ho/Fox, 1988; Ho 1996a), with a "new organicism" emerging (see Ho 1996b and references therein) which explicitly affirms Whitehead's (1925) view that nature cannot be understood except in terms of a theory of the organism that participates in knowing and in constructing reality. This happy coincidence in the evolution of ideas entices me to explore more tangible links between a tentative theory of the organism and sustainable economic systems.

Cited authors

Darwin Charles

Whitehead Alfred North