A Study of Biological Methods in Economics : Smith, Marshal and Veblen Reconsidered

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Minute investigations on Adam Smith's Concept of instinct, Charles Darwin's social instincts, Alfred Marshall's attentions on the evolutionary biology and Thorstein Veblen's persistent emphasis on the importance of evolutionary methods of economic sciences elucidated the following fact.Comparative research between the human being and other animals, began under the strong influences of philosophical and scientific revolution in the period of enlightenment, eliminated the simple machinery understanding of man. In the revolutionary process, the studies of natural history that is biology showed great progress. Carolus Linnaeus and Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon played the important role in this scientific revolution as well as Isaac Newton. Works of Linnaeus and Buffon opened the way to the scientific understanding of human being. David Hume's experiments to understand human nature in a society or social conducts is obviously in this stream of the times, and so Smith's The Theory of Moral … More Sentiments is.Thoroughly overthrow of natural theological understanding of human nature established in the era of enlightenment was done by Darwin's theory of evolution, especially by The Decent of Man. His composite conception of instincts, that is, of the instinct of self-preservation (self-love) and social instinct (reciprocal altruism), was the true breakthrough. Two economists, Marshal and Veblen showed the positive reaction. While Marshal has been famous for his strong appeal to the economic biology, he failed to incorporate the institutional or biological theory of social development into his theoretical structure distinctly in his Economics. Veblen, on the other hand, succeeded to grasp to two kinds of instinct as the instinct of workmanship and emulation, and depicted clearly the evolutionary process of institutions as a successive release of social instincts of human being, that is an accumulative process of human nature, although the side of self-preservation was treated lightly. In this sense, we can say that Adam Smith's theory is the most evolutionary one, for his whole discussion is developed upon self-love and reciprocal altruism. Less