>
> In terms of Brenner and evolutionary theory, it comes into play in his
> global turbulence book as an implicit analogy, I would say. Evolution is
> often thought of as a process of constant hill climbing, but it is possible
> that evolution has sometimes passed through valleys of intermediate forms
> of low fitness before beginning hill climbing on higher peaks on the
> adaptive landscape. But how does one survive in the valley? Analogously,
> how did Germany and Japn survive the transition to a new technological
> foundation on which higher heights could be reached though economic costs
> are high in a transition to a new technological paradigm and thus
> relative fitness dangerously low?
'Hill climing' in evolution is linked to the idea of 'fit' to an 'evolutionary niche'. Richard Levins and Richards Lewontin's 1985 book, 'The Dialectical Biologist' gives a good critique of such a description of evolution. Manfred Eigen's work on 'the origin of genetic information' (Gene, # 135, 1993, pp. 37-47) uses the concept of 'quasi-species' - i.e. within the unity of the species, there is considerable diversity. His work provides a practical critique of hill climbing: 'If we assign a fitness value to every sequence we obtain a fitness landscape that consists of peaks connected by ridges and seperated by (high-dimensional) saddles, valleys or planes. Natural selection, based on competitive replication, means the the system steadily tries to reach the (locally) highest point in this landscape, conversely, but otherwise similarly to water on earth, which tries to approach the lowest point in a landscape. *An essential difference is that sequence space has many dimensions which greatly reduces the chance of getting trapped during the hill climbing process of evolution.*' (my emphasis)
This 'multi-dimensionality' provides an argument that neither evolution, nor economics, are 'teleological' (damn jargon word) - neither one heads towards a defined goal. The development of Japan and Germany might have involved the development of an aspect of Japanese or German society which remained seemingly 'non-essential', a secondary effect, until what appeared first as quantity suddenly became visible and quality, and the framework of analysis needed to be adjusted. The history of 20th century economics provides many humorous examples of economists caught out when the criteria for 'fitness' suddenly shifted under their feet.
Just as Marx forgives Adam Smith for occassionally sounding like a physiocrat, I think we need to cut him a bit of slack for sounding stagist from time to time (e.g. the bit about 'tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results' in the Preface to the first German Ed. of Capital). After all, when history contradicted him (like in the case of the Paris Commune), he was quite able to vigorously incorporate the change into his thinking.
The idea of productivity of being the final principle of history is one which belongs more with Locke than with Marx. After all, which is more progressive? The 'backwards' productive methods of Mexican peasants, or the 'modern' productivity of an industrialised farm? If it is the industrialised farm, then I ask again which is more progressive - the peasants of the Chiapas 'autonomous municipality', or the farmers of the US corn belt?
There are many ways to skin a capitalist....
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.