ABSTRACT
Why do human societies differ and how do they change over time? Currently the most popular answer is that societies, in all their institutional complexity, are involved in evolutionary processes that differ mainly in terms o f their initial conditions and environ ments. While there are a variety o f scientific (as opposed to metaphysical) theories o f social evolution, they all fa ll into two broad categories: institutional theories that, through analogy with neo-Darwinism, emphasise evolutionary selective devices such as Thorstein Veblen’s ‘habits o f thoughf, Friedrich Hayek’s ‘trial and error1, and Douglass North’s ‘adaptive efficieniy’; and sociobiological theories that emphasise the role o f genetics. Institutional economics (Chapter 4), both ‘old’ and ‘new’, and sociobiology (Chapter 5) are the subjects o f study in this section. A s we shall see, th y are both unable to answer our original question.
