Reclaiming Evolution : A Dialogue on How Societies Evolve (Advances in Social Economics)

Rating:
Summary: Evolution of the Left
Review: The title says it all as this cogent work opens with a declaration of independence from sociobiology, and proceeds to a reexamination of social evolutionary thinking, the idea of 'evolution' in free fall. Ay there's the rub, what does the free floating concept of (social) evolution really mean, and what is its true relation with organismic evolution? This question has never found an answer, because even the theory of organismic evolution is incomplete. To escape the clutches of E.O. Wilson is not to escape those of S. J. Gould, and the assumptions of basic Darwinism still bedevil analysis even as the banishment of all ideas of progress simply compounds the confusion. For the idea of progress in the docket of ideology, in addition to its excision from all discussion of random evolution, leaves all in confusion. We should a more complex theory to explain progression in one form, as macroevolution, and the individual's actions, as freedom,in another, as a sort of microevolution. In any case, we are still 'looking for the answer',without the gimmicks of sociobiological reductionism and this book explores a host of interesting avenues in a liberating, though eclectic mix of themes from Veblen to Marx. Very stimulating work, and some real nose-thumbing at the Social Darwinist plot thickener from the right wing Darwin gang. Still, one is left with the question, where is the theory? A more universal history might give us the clue to an answer.