Quotes from “Hayek Contra Pangloss on Evolutionary Systems”

By Douglas Whitman (1998)

• To theorize that evolution could have led to a different and possibly superior outcome is fine, but to say precisely what that outcome would have been is an act of the imagination, and trying to realize an imaginary outcome in the real world is to engage, not in evolutionary theory, but in rational constructivist design.#
  MethodologyEvolution
• The real debate in biology, then, is not selection of individuals versus selection of groups, but selection of genes versus selection at multiple levels of a hierarchy.#
  BiologyEvolution
• Individuals are not units of selection upon which selective forces operate, except insofar as an individual may be perceived as a conglomeration of multiple memes and genes. What is essential for a methodologically individualist account of the evolution of cultural outcomes is that individuals constitute a filter (i.e., a selective mechanism) through which memes must pass before they can begin to have systemic effects.#
  BiologyEvolution