Darwin and some leading ideas of contemporary Western culture

Stanley N. Salthe

Resumen


The discourse of Smith / Malthus / Darwin, combined with that of Carnot / Clausius and Boltzmann from the early part of the Industrial Revolution, set the basic ideological bases of capitalist culture, in the key ideas of striving and competition. Reproduction is biological work, and the genotype that is reproduced most rapidly tends to dominate a gene pool even as that reproduction increases the entropy production of the population. Competition between firms in an economy and between carriers of different genotypes in a population have the same basic cognitive import, the one having pragmatic implications, while the other carries mythological freight, each supporting the other.

 Key words. Big Bang, capitalism, competition, dissipation, economy, efficiency, entropy, planning, striving, work


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Referencias


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