Agreeing on generalised Darwinism: A response to Pavel Pelikan

Abstract

Pelikan (J Evol Econ 21:341-366, 2011) develops an interesting conceptual framework that adds to prior work on generalised Darwinism. Despite claims to the contrary we show that it is similar to the approach developed by Hodgson and Knudsen (J Evol Econ 16(4):343-366, 2006a, J Econ Behav Organ 75(1):12-24, 2010a, b), Aldrich et al. (J Evol Econ 18(5):577-596, 2008) and others. Pelikan also mischaracterises the Hodgson-Knudsen position over Lamarckism. We show why the term is misleading (rather than strictly wrong) when applied to social evolution. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.