Taking Evolution Seriously.

Taking Evolution SeriouslyOrion LewisSven SteinmoAbstractIn this essay we take evolutionary theory seriously. The term 'evolution' is generally used rather casually by political scientists and the basic idea motivating our inquiry was to see whether specific concepts and/or insights from theories based on biological evolution can be profitably applied to social and political institutions. The paper opens with a brief outline of several basic insights into the evolutionary process developed over the past 150 years. First, we highlight Darwin's fundamental (and highly controversial) insight that evolutionary change depends on the uniqueness of every individual within a population or species. Because all individuals are different, they will respond to or adapt to different environmental stimuli in unique ways. His 'Survival of the Fittest" theory does not imply that the strongest, smartest, or 'best,' creatures are the most likely to reproduce. Rather, he argued that those individuals who happen to have generated either physical or behavioral characteristics that give them some small advantage in their local environment are most likely to succeed in that environment. These individuals are more likely to have offspring than those without the advantage and therefore over time the population will be dominated with this physical or behavioral trait. Secondly, evolutionary theories begin with an understanding of change as being a simultaneously endogenous and exogenous process. Instead of seeing the process as one of fundamental stability (what political scientists and economists would call 'equilibrium') evolutionary theorists understand the world as a 'complex adaptive system.' From an evolutionary point of view it makes no sense to speak of "independent" and "dependent" variables when explaining long term change. The environment in which an organism lives affects the development of that organism, just as the organism affects the environment in which it lives. Evolution, then, is a dynamic and interactive process in which small changes in the environment and/or small changes in an organism's genes may result in significant long term changes in the environment and the population.We then briefly discuss the ontological and epistemological implications of these insights. We show that evolutionary theorists have rejected the model of science drawn from early versions of Newtonian physics. In this view, traditional physics assumes stable units of analysis and fixed laws governing behavior. Neither of these assumptions is useful for students of evolution. Instead, theirs is an historical science which utilizes comparative historical methods, presents historical narratives, and 'most plausible' explanations. Evolution is neither predictive nor falsifiable. In the second part of the paper we attempt to use some of the insights drawn from evolutionary theory to help solve two foundational questions that political science are currently addressing: The origins of human preferences and explaining institutional change. We suggest that evolutionary theorists' focus on the gene reproduction (all organisms' fundamental desire is to pass on their genes) is significantly more helpful for understanding the origins of human preferences than either Rational Choice's assumption that we are all individual utility maximizers, or Historical/Sociological Institionalism's assumption that preferences are produced by the institutions themselves. Finally, we attempt to push an analogy between genes (which are rules governing cell reproduction and behavior) and political institutions (which are also rules governing reproduction and behavior)... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]