July 2, 2013 4:49 pm
FT
By John Kay
The match between
capabilities and environment is the key to success
Your correspondent is
sitting below a large and ugly statue of Charles
Darwin, overlooking the bay where the great scientist stepped ashore
on Chatham, now San Cristobal, the most easterly of theGalápagos Islands I am here to discuss
the ways in which evolutionary theory can contribute to our understanding of
social sciences.
It seems barely
possible that careful observation of finches, mockingbirds and tortoises could
fundamentally change the way we think about the world. But in the 19th century
it did. The Galápagos, 700 miles from the mainland of Ecuador, contain flora
and fauna that differ from those of the rest of the world and differ, but less,
from island to island. The genius of Darwin was to apprehend the process by
which this pattern came about.
Evolution is a
process with three elements; variation, selection and replication. Changes
happen, a few of these changes yield advantages, and such changes tend to be
reproduced in subsequent generations. The extraordinary outcome – so
far-reaching in its implications that Darwin hesitated to publish his ideas –
is that designs of extraordinary complexity and efficiency can be achieved
without the aid of a designer.
Designs can emerge
beyond the comprehension of any individual.
That insight, and the
mechanics of variation, selection and replication, are relevant to many
problems other than the origin of species. Modern business has developed as a
result of the variation that comes from experiments in products and business
methods, the selection by customers and capital markets of adaptations that add
value (and the rejection of those that do not), and the replication by competitors
of strategies that succeed.
But evolutionary
thinking has made little progress in economics and encountered vigorous
resistance in other social sciences. One source of difficulty is the character
of those who favour such extension. Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century
philosopher who coined the expression “survival of the fittest”, seems a
ludicrous figure to modern eyes but was highly influential in his time. Spencer
saw social evolution as a process of progressive advance through natural
selection, an idea developed by eugenicists, who advocated selective breeding
to improve the quality of the human stock.
Eugenics was
comprehensively discredited when the Nazis took the argument to murderous
extremes. And even today, the idea human behaviour might have biological
origins is tainted by these fascist and racist associations. When EO Wilson,
the distinguished biologist, applied the insights he had gained from the study
of communities of ants to human social organisation, his lectures were picketed
and he was doused with water at a meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science.
But the demonstrators
had little understanding of the points at issue. To describe evolution as “the
survival of the fittest” is in a sense accurate but also profoundly misleading.
The process of evolution is one of adaptation rather than improvement. The Galápagos tortoises survived for millions
of years, not because tortoises are the master race, but because they are
suited to a location characterised by mud, plentiful vegetation and a dearth of
mammalian predators.
The match between
capabilities and environment is the key to the success of the tortoise. It is
also the key to successful business strategy, the effectiveness of
institutions, and to personal development; and the evolutionary mechanisms of
adaptation, selection and replication are as much at work in these areas of
human activity as on the Galápagos. Evolution is a process of trial and error
that receives regular feedback and tends to reproduce success. That is equally
a description of how a market economy aligns productive capabilities with
consumer needs.
Sitting at the feet
of Darwin on a remote Pacific island with unique vegetation and wildlife is an
invitation to humility. What worked best on one Galápagos island was not
necessarily what worked best on another, and the reasons might not be obvious:
it required 20 years of observation by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a century
after Darwin, to understand properly what the 19th-century sage had seen when
he observed the island finches. People who believe they understand complex
ecosystems, biological or economic, generally know less than they think.
“Evolution is smarter than you are”, but you need to be smart to understand the
implications of that observation.
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