ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the exchange of analogies between biology and economics, particularly with regard to the use of the concepts of competition, selfishness, altruism, and rationality. Confusion over the level of analysis has obscured the conflict between modern evolutionary biology and the behavioral assumptions of mainstream economics. In the biological case, there is competition between selfish agents in almost the opposite sense to that in economics. In economics, competition is an outcome of the properties of the individual agents, who are thought to be selfish. In biology, the “selfishness” of the agents is an outcome of competition. The complex relationship between an individual organism and its environment suggests that altruism at the level of the individual is not inconsistent with selfishness at the genetic level. Furthermore, an examination of the way in which evolution reaches (locally) optimal solutions to problems yields a strong presumption against assuming ubiquitously rational behavior at the individual level for humans.
