Please distribute to others who may be interested...
You are hereby invited to the twenty-seventh seminar organized in
2005 by the "Evolution, Complexity and
Cognition (ECCO)" research group:
Extending the Evolutionary
Epistemology Paradigm into Economics
by
Dr. Bertin Martens
(European Commission &
ECCO)
Place: room 3C204 (building C, 3rd floor), VUB campus
Etterbeek
Time: Thursday, Nov. 17, at
17:00 h.
Abstract
A weak interpretation of the Evolutionary Epistemology (EE)
paradigm claims that both biological and cognitive evolution are
subject to the same Darwinian selection mechanism. A stronger
interpretation claims that all structures emerging in the evolutionary
process, whether biological or not, are increasingly complex
repositories of knowledge. The purpose of this talk is to
explore to what extent either version of the EE paradigm has found a
foothold in social science in general and in economics in particular.
Branches of the weak interpretation have made some headway in
economics but remain unconnected and partial explanations for economic
development and the evolution of human societal structures and
institutions. I will examine whether the strong interpretation
offers more scope by focusing on the role of the emergence of
distributed knowledge in human societies and the role that economic
systems (exchange of embodied knowledge) plays in this evolution.
I start from applications of the Entropy Law to the understanding of
economic development and move towards an information/cognitive
interpretation of this Law to explain the self-organising nature of
economic systems and the evolutionary potential that it carries.
About the speaker
Bertin Martens is an economist who works since 1989 at the
European Commission in Brussels on project design and evaluation,
macro-economic modelling and implementation of structural reform
programmes. He has combined his professional career with academic
research, holding Visiting Fellow positions at the University of New
South Wales, the Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic
Systems, George Mason University, and Stanford University--where he
worked for six months with the Nobel Prize winner Douglas North. He
focuses on cognitive science approaches to economic development and
institutional change. His PhD thesis on this topic has been published as a book by Routledge in 2005.
More info
ECCO
seminar programme coming weeks
- 25 Nov: Nathalie Gontier: Symbiogenesis as a Fundamental Evolutionary Principle
- 2 Dec: Gustaaf Geeraerts & Mehmet Tezcan: Modeling the complex adaptive system of governance in EU Foreign Policy
- 16 Dec: Mixel Kiemen: A network of bootstraps to ground language for higher-level agent cognition
ECCO seminars normally take place each Friday at 17h00 in room
3C204 of the VUB Campus Etterbeek. Everyone interested is welcome. The
seminars are very interactive, with small groups (about 8 people). The
intention is to discuss in depth the research being proposed, and to
look for interdisciplinary connections with other themes related to
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition. Seminars last about two hours,
after which the remaining participants go to take a drink or a snack
in the Opinio Café on the campus, to continue the discussion in a
more relaxed setting.
--
Francis Heylighen
"Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" research group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
Francis Heylighen
"Evolution, Complexity and Cognition" research group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
