ABSTRACT
In its largest sense, evolutionary economics is simply an attempt to look at an economic system, whether of the whole world or of its parts, as a continuing process in space and time. Each economy is then seen as a segment of the larger evolutionary process of the universe in space and time … or if we want to be very Einsteinian, in four-dimensional space-time, though in economics I don’t think we have to worry about that very much. The larger pattern of evolution, in this part of the universe at least, involves three stages: (1) Physical and chemical evolution produces the stars and planets, the elements, compounds, air, water, rocks, and so on. Biological evolution starts with DNA, producing living species. Societal evolution starts with Homo sapiens and our extraordinary capacity for knowledge, for images of the world, and for producing artifacts. As human knowledge develops into know-how, in many parts of the world now the mass of human artifacts certainly exceeds the mass of biological artifacts, and the number of different human artifacts probably exceeds the number of biological species.
