From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri 08 Apr 2005 - 03:14:51 GMT
While attempting to read the book _Darwinism and
Evolutionary Economics_ (2001. Edward Elgar Publishing
Limited. Northampton, Massachusetts) I started reading
the contribution by a guy named John Wilkins. I was
slumbering after being lulled into a stupor by
continuing reference to abstract economic terms in
previous authors' contributions, with some momnents of
brief excitement when Lamarckism and Steele's
immunological theories came up. The author previous to
Wilkins cites Milton Friedman and I perked up and
said, hey that's a name I finally recognize. Anyway,
Wilkins's essay is a breath of fresh air since there
don't seem to be any airy economic terms and he
usually knows what he's talking about (sigh of
relief). This might be tangential to John's essay, but
I couldn't help noticing his discussion of novelty
generation and delineation between combinatorial and
deep novelty citing someone named Margaret Boden. For
combinatorial novelty John says: "Only the
combinations are different- the 'building blocks' are
potentially available at all times." He uses the
analogy of always being dealt to from the same deck of
cards. For deep novelty John says: "At its base, all
evolution ultimately depends upon deep novelty, but
mostly evolution proceeds through recombination of
existing alternatives in different contexts." and
"[d]eep novelty is rare." Based on the analogy to the
cards he uses for deep novelty, I'm assuming this is
kinda like genetic mutation. He can clarify I hope.
Anyway, this makes me think of Jung's essay on
cryptomnesia and what he says about material or
elements remaining the same and only the combinations
being responsible for generation of novelty. In
"Cryptomnesia" (CW1, Psychiatric Studies, para 178)
Jung said: "I said earlier that only the combinations
are new, not the material, which hardly alters at all,
or only very slowly and almost imperceptibly." This
slow and imperceptible alteration sounds like the deep
novelty John talks about. It's amazing how Carl
Gustav's comments dovetail with John's. I'm sure he's
more than thrilled that I'm using my memory to
recombine him with Jung :-) But in some ways the guy
was before his time, though we all know he had his
quirks (Jung not John).
Nothing new here. Just rehashing old stuff. Carry
on...
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