ABSTRACT
Institutional reality is multifaceted and involves a variety of aspects across domains. In this PartII on generic institutionalism we elaborated on central generic heuristics of social learning in evolutionary economic bottom-up programs. Convergence in these heuristics is given through the naturalization of knowledge, which also links to Part I on the naturalistic foundations of a generic evolutionary ontology in economics. In this section we discuss the outlines of an appropriate synthesis of the prior elaborated categories, because finally there is a need to program these semantic considerations in synthetic rules and actual formalized bottom-up models to guide policy programs. We have elaborated (1) on the Veblenian habits of thought and its cumulative causation leading to institutional change; (2) on the Hayekian rules of conduct and the potential of spontaneous naturalistic order; (3) on the Schumpeterian entrepreneur initializing innovation processes; and (4) on Bourdieu's habitus and its co-evolution within the various fields of social life. All these approaches carry a systemic convergence emphasizing a deeper order of embodied knowledge, properly speaking of an affective order where cultural evolution operates. It is the mind-body nexus which leads to the dissemination of knowledge — still constrained by power relations in networks of domination — and not the complete rational order of general equilibrium, where we just find a vacuum of power. The endogenous and immanent potential of harmony as well as conflict shapes the evolution of knowledge via social learning, carrying the economy over time and space. Within a modular conception of the evolving economy we may observe activity of all four of these heuristics (and necessarily more than them) simultaneously on different scales, but how can we translate them in a proper synthesis. As concluded in Part I it is the interrelation of onto- and phylogenesis in the generic institutionalization of knowledge, meaning in particular that there is always knowledge about certain habits of thought, about the sensory aspects of imitation and adaptation, the entrepreneurial creative vision as well as the habitus and the field which is transmitted and maintained in a quasi-unconscious way. We suggest referring to the category of a rule as a synthetic formulation of an idea, where this idea is of bimodal nature, providing information on the cultural aspects of social learning. This outline builds on the generic evolutionary framework provided in compressed form in Dopfer and Potts (2008). The authors have created a unique universe of evolutionary economics, encouraging implicitly the idea of evolutionary economic programs, implemented in a bottom-up way in economy and society.
