Parallels between economics and

evolution
Or what happens when ideas
have sex
Santiago September 2009

Matt Ridley

Blind order
`Natural selection, the
blind, unconscious
automatic process
which Darwin
discovered, and which
we now know is the explanation
for the existence and apparently
purposeful form of all life, has no
purpose in mind. It has no mind
and no mind's eye. It does not
plan for the future. It has no
vision, no foresight, no sight at
all.
Richard Dawkins, The Blind
Watchmaker 1986

`Every step and every

movement of the
multitude, even in
what are termed enlightened
ages, are made with equal
blindness to the future; and
nations stumble upon
establishments, which are indeed
the result of human action, but
not the execution of any human
design.
Adam Ferguson Essay on civil
society 1767

The Philosophers
`My studies consist
of Adam Smith
and Locke.
Darwin, 9 Jan
1829, letter to
W.D.Fox

Adam Smith 1759:

The Theory of Moral Sentiments
In spite of their natural selfishness and
rapacity, though they mean only their own
conveniencythey are led by an invisible hand
to make nearly the same distribution of the
necessaries of life, which would have been
made, had the earth been divided into equal
portions among all its inhabitants, and thus
without intending it, without knowing it,
advance the interest of the society.

Charles Darwin 1859:

The Origin of Species
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and
death, the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production
of the higher animals, directly follows.

Harriet Martineau
"Erasmus knows her &
is a very great admirer
& every body reads her
little books & if you
have a dull hour you
can, and then throw
them overboard, that
they may not take up
your precious room.
(letter from his sisters)

Robert Malthus
"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I
had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to
read for amusement Malthus on Population, and
being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for
existence which everywhere goes on from longcontinued observation of the habits of animals
and plants, it at once struck me that under these
circumstances favourable variations would tend to
be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be
destroyed. The results of this would be the
formation of a new species. Here, then I had at
last got a theory by which to work". Darwin,
autobiography, 1876

Cultural evolution
What I am not talking about today
Culture as an instinct nature vs nurture
Culture to reinforce or counter natural selection
Social Darwinism and eugenics
Gene-culture co-evolution Dairy
What I am talking about
Cultural evolution natural selection among
ideas, tools, habits

Descent with
modification

Replication

Mutation

Competition

Specialisation

Speciation

Recombination
`to create is to recombine
Francois Jacob

=
X
`the motor car was sired by the
bicycle out of the horse
carriage L.T.C. Rolt

Accumulating innovations
Exchange is to culture as sex is to evolution

Asexual/autarkic

Nucleus
Chloroplast
Mitochondria

Sexual/exchanging

Fur
Lactation
Placenta

Wheel
Rubber
Steel

Phone
Computer
Search engine

Bdelloid rotifer

Gladyshev, Meselson, Arkhipova 2008. Massive horizontal gene transfer in

bdelloid rotifers. Science 320:1210

Exchange?

Language
Fire
2 legs

Tools

The Neanderthal enigma

Big brain
Tool using
Cooking
Dead burying
Well spoken

Yet trapped within their niche

Trade

Exchange is not reciprocity

Reciprocity

Exchange

`Nobody ever saw a

dog make fair
exchange of a bone
with another dog
Adam Smith

Comparative advantage
David
Ricardo
Ig takes 4 hours to make a spear
and 3 hours to make an axe
Og takes 1 hour to make a spear
and 2 hours to make an axe
If Og makes 2 spears
And Ig makes 2 axes
And they trade

Then they each save an hour of work

The sexual division of labour

Hadza

Division of labour in animals

Worker and queen ant

Nassarius shell beads

Bouzougar et al. 2007. PNAS 2007 104:9964-9969;

Barton et al 2009 doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2009.03.010.

The stone axes of Mt Isa

Tasmanian technological simplification

Tierra del Fuego Ona

Farming a
division of
labour between
humans and
other species

Fossil fuels a
division of
labour between
humans and
extinct species?

Specialised production, diversified

consumption
Consuming
making shelter
sleeping

Consumer interdependence

making clothes

personal care
recreation
communication

fetching fuel

entertainment
sleeping

fetching water

producing food

shopping
housework

`Peasant self-sufficiency

travel
eating

job

How long does it take to earn an hour of

reading light?
Tallow candle
1800 6 hrs

Labour cost of 1,200 lumen

hours at average wage

Kerosene lamp
1880 15 mins
Incandescent bulb
1950 8 secs
CF bulb
1997 sec

Source: Nordhaus 1997

Cultural evolution can be kinder

Parallels between economics and

evolution
Or what happens when ideas
have sex
Santiago September 2009

Matt Ridley