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Economic Exchange as an Evolutionary Transmission Channel in Human Societies

  • Thematic Issue Article: How Evolutionary is Evolutionary Economics?
  • Published:
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Abstract

This article argues that the (epi)genetic, cultural, symbolic, and environmental transmission channels are insufficient to explain the structure of modern human societies. Economic exchange of knowledge embodied in goods and services constitutes an additional transmission channel that makes more efficient use of limited human cognitive capacity. Economic exchange results in a gradual shift in societies from task-based division of labor to cognitive specialization. This shifts scarce cognitive resources away from production and into learning. It accelerates learning and reinforces the drive towards specialization. Cognitive specialization may constitute another “major transition” towards a higher level of aggregation in human societies, with properties that differ from symbolic transmission. Collective control of individual market-based exchange is ensured by means of economic institutions that put a constraint on individual behavior.

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Notes

  1. Modern evolutionary economics is a large tree with many branches, ranging from the application of the principles of Darwinian genetic evolution to technological innovation and economic development to evolutionary institutional economics and more normative political economy approaches. For an overview, see Witt (2003, 2008), Hanappi and Elsner (2008), or Hodgson (2002).

  2. In this article I use the words “communication” and “transmission” as synonyms.

  3. Though that is still a somewhat controversial issue (Kingsolver et al. 2001; Odling-Smee et al. 2003, pp. 248–249). Any evidence to the contrary remains very weak. Only small and statistically unreliable samples show high evolution gradients; large sample studies point to very slow gradients.

  4. We can make a distinction between the physiological information processing capacity of the neuronal system in the human brain and the economic limits to human information absorption and learning. The physiological limits cause these economic limits. Here we focus on the economic limits only.

  5. In his Cognition in the Wild, Ed Hutchins (1995) observes the extent of overlapping expertise among agents in a maritime navigation system. He notices considerable redundancy that is required to ensure the robustness of the system. The navigation system corrects itself when one element malfunctions.

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  1. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Seville, Spain

    Bertin Martens

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  1. Bertin Martens
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Correspondence to Bertin Martens.

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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in a workshop on “Models of Man in Evolutionary Economics.” The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) or the European Commission.

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Martens, B. Economic Exchange as an Evolutionary Transmission Channel in Human Societies. Biol Theory 6, 366–376 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0040-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0040-8

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