Darwinisn in economics: From analogy to ontology

Abstract. Several social scientists, including ‘evolutionary economists’, have ex-pressed scepticism of ‘biological analogies ’ and rejected the application of ‘Dar-winism ’ to socio-economic evolution. Among this group, some have argued that self-organisation is an alternative to biological analogies orDarwinism.Others have seen ‘artificial selection ’ as an alternative to natural selection in the socio-economic sphere. Another objection is that Darwinism excludes human intentionality. It is shown that all these objections to ‘biological analogies ’ and ‘Darwinism ’ are un-grounded. Furthermore, Darwinism includes a broad theoretical framework for the analysis of the evolution of all open, complex systems, including socio-economic systems. Finally and crucially, Darwinism also involves a basic philosophical com-mitment to detailed, cumulative, causal explanations. For these reasons, Darwinism is fully relevant for economics and an adequate evolutionary economics must be Darwinian, at least in these fundamental senses. However, this does not undermine the need for auxiliary theories and explanations in the economic domain