Table Of ContentHistory, Philosophy & Theory of the Life Sciences
Jean-Baptiste André
Mikael Cozic · Silvia De Monte
Jean Gayon · Philippe Huneman
Johannes Martens · Bernard Walliser
From Evolutionary
Biology to
Economics
and Back
Parallels and Crossings between
Economics and Evolution
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life
Sciences
Volume 28
Series Editors
Philippe Huneman, Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des
techniques, CNRS - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (IHPST), Paris, France
Thomas A. C. Reydon, Institute of Philosophy & CELLS, Leibniz Universität
Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Charles T. Wolfe, Département de Philosophie & ERRAPHIS, Université de
Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, Toulouse, France
Editorial Board Members
Marshall Abrams, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL, USA
André Ariew, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA
Richard Burian, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Minus van Baalen, Institut Biologie de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
Pietro Corsi, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
François Duchesneau, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada
John Dupre, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Paul Farber, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Lisa Gannett, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Andy Gardner, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
Jean Gayon, UFR de Philosophie, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France
Guido Giglioni, University of Macerata, Civitanova Marche, Italy
Paul Griffiths, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Thomas Heams, AgroParisTech, Paris Cedex 05, France
James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Annick Lesne, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
Tim Lewens, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Edouard Machery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Alexandre Métraux, Archives Poincaré, Nancy, France
Hans Metz, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Roberta L. Millstein, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA
Staffan Müller-Wille, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
François Munoz, Université Montpellier 2, Montpellier, France
Dominic Murphy, University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia
Stuart A. Newman, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA
Frederik Nijhout, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Samir Okasha, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Susan Oyama, The City University of New York, New York, USA
Kevin Padian, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
David Queller, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
Stephane Schmitt, Archives Poincaré, Nancy, France
Phillip Sloan, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
Jacqueline Sullivan, Western University, London, ON, Canada
Giuseppe Testa, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
J. Scott Turner, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry,
Syracuse, NY, USA
Denis Walsh, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Marcel Weber, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences is a space for dialogue
between life scientists, philosophers and historians – welcoming both essays about
the principles and domains of cutting-edge research in the life sciences, novel ways
of tackling philosophical issues raised by the life sciences, as well as original
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The series is interested in receiving book proposals that • are aimed at academic
audience of graduate level and up • combine historical and/or philosophical and/or
theoretical studies with work from disciplines within the life sciences broadly
conceived, including (but not limited to) the following areas: • Anatomy &
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Thomas A.C. Reydon: [email protected]
Jean-Baptiste André • Mikael Cozic
Silvia De Monte • Jean Gayon
Philippe Huneman • Johannes Martens
Bernard Walliser
From Evolutionary Biology
to Economics and Back
Parallels and Crossings between
Economics and Evolution
Jean-Baptiste André Mikael Cozic
Département d’études Cognitives Department of Philosophy
Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Université Lyon III
Supérieure, PSL Research University, Lyon, France
EHESS, CNRS
Paris, France Jean Gayon
Institut d’histoire et de philosophie
Silvia De Monte des sciences et des techniques
Eco-Evolutionary Mathematics Team CNRS - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-
Institute of Biology of Ecole Normale Sorbonne (IHPST)
Supérieure, PSL Research University Paris, France
Paris, France
Johannes Martens
Philippe Huneman SND (Université Paris Sorbonne/CNRS)
Institut d’histoire et de philosophie Paris, France
des sciences et des techniques
CNRS - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-
Sorbonne (IHPST)
Paris, France
Bernard Walliser
Ecole d’Economie de Paris-Paris School
of Economics
Paris, France
This work was supported by Agence Nationale de la Recherche. Projet EvoEco
(ANRSHS20138038).
ISSN 2211-1948 ISSN 2211-1956 (electronic)
History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences
ISBN 978-3-031-08789-9 ISBN 978-3-031-08790-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08790-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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This book is dedicated to Jean Gayon,
struck down by illness during its writing.
Acknowledgments
This book is the completion of a collective adventure. Based on an initial idea of
Silvia De Monte, who thought of writing a short dual lexicon of concepts in evolu-
tion and economics, and proposed it to all of us in the context of the ANR Project
Evo Eco (conceptual transfers between evolution and economics) that had just
started, it grew into a real philosophy book, after many sessions of discussion that
the authors had undertaken about these concepts. It would not have been possible
without the commitment, energy, and creativity of Jean Gayon, who inspired us to
never stop questioning philosophically notions that were supposed to be well known.
Unfortunately, Jean left us in May 2018, and won’t be there to see the result of this
collaborative work. However, at the time he passed away, the book was almost done
in the form of a complete first draft and he contributed to the whole content and vali-
dated it. The last steps towards completion were technically small steps but, in these
conditions, became a hard move to make. This book is dedicated to his endur-
ing memory.
The authors thank: the ANR Evo Eco, the EUR FrontCog grant ANR-17-
EURE-0017, and the Labex Who I Am.
Originally written partly in French and partly in English, the book benefitted
from a thorough editing and translating job done by Anita Conrade, to whom we are
all grateful.
ix
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
P. Huneman
2 Preliminary Reflections: Analogical Reasoning Between
Economics and Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
B. Walliser
3 Keywords in Economics and Evolutionary Biology:
Twenty Five Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Jean-Baptiste André, Mikael Cozic, Silvia De Monte, Jean Gayon,
Philippe Huneman, Johannes Martens, and Bernard Walliser
4 Concluding Remarks 1: The Relevance of the
Studied Analogies According to Their Field
Origin and System Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
B. Walliser
5 Concluding Remarks 2: Economics and Evolutionary
Biology: An Overview of Their (Recent) Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
J. Martens
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
P. Huneman
Content
References 6
It has long been acknowledged that economics and evolutionary biology have a lot in
common. Ever since Darwin borrowed Malthus’s ideas about the scarcity of resources
and geometric population growth, economic ways of thinking are known to have influ-
enced biology. In the 1970s, the import of game theory, elaborated by economists, into
evolutionary biology via behavioral ecology, by Maynard-Smith and Price, among oth-
ers (Maynard-Smith, 1982; Maynard-Smith & Price, 1973), is another well-known
instance of this relationship. And in a canonical text of the Modern Synthesis, Fisher’s
Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (Fisher, 1930), the author refers to basic eco-
nomic notions, i.e. loans and investments, to define the key concept of fitness. Inversely,
economists drew on schemes and concepts from evolutionary biology throughout the
twentieth century. Evolutionary economics, elaborated first by Nelson and Winter
(1982), is an obvious example. One could also cite the acclimatation of evolutionary
game theory within economics, as well as the various inflexions of the concept of ratio-
nality through confrontation with biological parameters, such as the idea of “ecological
rationality” (Gigerenzer et al., 1999), an instance of the bounded rationality Herbert
Simon described as a more realist alternative to neoclassical notions of rationality.
Transfers of concepts between economics and evolutionary biology are therefore
pervasive, and any specialist in either discipline can point out a few. However, this
is far from constituting an analysis of the conceptual interplay between the two
fields. Granted, there are several historical analyses of the role played by key figures
behind such transfers, starting with Darwin, Friedman, Hayek, Maynard-Smith, or
others. There are also in-depth analyses of specific correspondences between con-
cepts, such as fitness and utility in economics (Okasha, 2007). But no systematic
P. Huneman (*)
Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques,
CNRS - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (IHPST), Paris, France
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2022
J.-B. André et al., From Evolutionary Biology to Economics and Back, History,
Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 28,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08790-5_1
