http://www.etss.net/index.php ETSS.net news en {username} Copyright 2011 2011-05-28T22:00:48+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/may_28_2011/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/may_28_2011/#When:22:00:48Z David Sloan Wilson argues that to gain real knowledge of humanity, every field needs to drink from the “cup” of evolutionary theory. But he argues that behavioral economics as practiced today pays too little attention to evolutionary theory. Read the full article, Take the Evolution Challenge here.  2011-05-28T22:00:48+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/november_7_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/november_7_2010/#When:10:51:27Z Berkeley geology Professor Walter Alavrez and one of his former students, Roland Saekow, have created a cool software to visualize all of history--yes you have heard it right. It takes you from the big bang to history on the human scale. Check out Chronozoom. 2010-11-07T10:51:27+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_23_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_23_2010/#When:07:33:21Z Edge.org just held a noteworthy conference on the THE NEW SCIENCE OF MORALITY. In his NY column The Moral Naturalists David Brooks wets your appetitive to watch the contributions of leading scholars in the new field of evolutionary morality. All speaker videos will be posted this weekend.  2010-07-23T07:33:21+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_17_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_17_2010/#When:09:08:08Z Edge.org published a stimulating interview with W. Brian Arthur on his new book, The Nature of Technology. After autobiographical comments that may not interest all readers, Arthur gives an overview how the economy evolves as a consequence of postiive and negative feedback mechanism. He then moves on to this idea of technological innovations.  Students of history of technology will not find that Arthur’s theory is particular novel. (To get a sense, the great historian Payson Abbot Usher has conceptualized technological change in 1929/1945, read the review essay of A History of Mechanical Invention on Eh.net.) Arthur, consisent with the theory of innovation that sees them as recombining elements in new ways, marries old ideas with novel ones that come out of complexity theory. For a recent overview paper of the best ideas for studying relationship between technological and industrial evolution, read Murmann and Frenken. 2010-07-17T09:08:08+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_5_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/july_5_2010/#When:14:55:03Z Howard E. Aldrich, Geoffrey M. Hodgson, David L. Hull, Thorbjoern Knudsen, Joel Mokyr, and Viktor J. Vanberg have jointly published an article “In defence of Generalized Darwinism” in the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. The article is more nuanced the previous efforts by Hodgson and Knudson and is very a good read because it highlights the key issues on developing further evolutionary theories in the social sciences.  2010-07-05T14:55:03+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/april_1_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/april_1_2010/#When:11:22:16Z “If ever there was a scientific theory that is fundamentally historical, that purports to explain change over time, it is evolution through natural selection and its corollary, humankind’s dual inheritance. Yet I have to admit that my fellow historians, teaching in history departments and professing to study that process of change, have been highly resistant to evolutionary theory.” Read more of Donald Worster’s interesting article Historians and Nature in the American Spectator. 2010-04-01T11:22:16+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/january_3_2010/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/january_3_2010/#When:14:46:54Z Stephen Toulmin, author of Human understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts has died. Read the obituaries by Michael Ruse in the Chronicle of Higher Education and William Grimes in the New York Times. 2010-01-03T14:46:54+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/jan/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/jan/#When:11:44:16Z Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard, takes the occasion of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday to review in the London Review of Books the influece of Darwin in science as well in general culture. The piece is very comprehensive albeit a bit long with almot 8800 words. Read Full Review. 2010-01-01T11:44:16+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/september_6_2009/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/september_6_2009/#When:20:24:03Z Geerat Vermeij, a biologist who has become interested in economic principles, wrote a few years back a book entitled, Nature: An Economic History. In this work he interpreted biological evolution through the lens of economic principles. (See Joel Mokyr’s excellent review of this effort in the Journal of Economic Literature.) Perhaps prompted by Mokyr’s criticisms, Vermeij just published an article in the Journal of Bioeconomics that sees today’s economic system to be subject to the same constraints that shaped biological evolution over billions of years.  Vermeij argues: No matter how advanced our future civilization will become, it will retain properties that all living systems possess, and it is unlikely to escape entirely from the constraints inherent in resource-dependent life. Economic policies and visions of the future must take these realities into account. We cannot eliminate local competition, voluntarily reduce energy use, avoid resource limitation, or sacrifice redundancy in favor of economic efficiency. What will also interest social scientists in this article are the descriptions of how biological evolution proceeded at the very beginning of life before sexual replication had been invented. Full article. 2009-09-06T20:24:03+00:00 http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/february_12_2009/ http://etss.net/index.php?/weblog/newsarticle/february_12_2009/#When:05:35:03Z Factoid: In 2008 14% of people polled by Gallup agreed that “man evolved over millions of years”, up from 9% in 1982. Click on “Read more to see statistics on the public acceptance of Darwinism by country.  2009-02-13T05:35:03+00:00