Industry, Revolution, Evolution

An Evolutionist Economics is not a means to survival, to leisure, or to any of the means to those, including wealth, individual or collective. But an Evolutionist Economics is not a means to Evolution, either.  For, Production is a primary factor in Economics, and Production itself has been among the central loci of the development of Human history from Eden to the Moon.  That is, the Means of Production have evolved from rudimentary sewing and cooking, to mechanical machines, to internal combustion engines, to electrical motors, to digital devices.  But even these need to be produced, even as they replace human labor, requiring their own Means of Production and human labor, themselves evolving processes. Thus, Economics is not a means to Evolution, but one of its fundamental expressions.  Accordingly, an Industrial Revolution that fuels the emergences of Capitalism and Socialism, is, more accurately, an Industrial Evolution.

Anthropocentrism and Evolution

The disproof of Geocentricism undermines two entailed theses: 1. The existence of a deity in a realm that is physically contiguous with the Earth, i. e. the sky; and 2. Anthropocentrism.  Now, each loss has had traumatic Nihilism-breeding implications for Humans.  But, while Nietzsche more provocatively addresses the first, i. e. "God is dead", the second, expressed by "Human All Too Human", more profoundly signifies the problem.  For, what has been lost is more than Meaning--it is the presumed privileged status of the favored creature that breeds the Nihilism that permits, e. g. the self-designated superiority of the murderous Hitler.  In contrast, Darwinism offers a better-grounded revision of Anthropocentrism--the evolutionary superiority of the Human species.  However, that revision entails the condition that Humans are not also independent of the Earthly biosphere, but are products of it. Thus, Armstrong's Anthropocentric "one giant leap for Mankind" should be amended as "one giant leap for Earthkind", i. e. because just as Armstrong is representative of Mankind, Mankind is representative of all of the Earth.  Likewise, the Moon landing is a moment in not only Human history, but in Natural History as well.

Evolution and Economics

Such a doctrine as an Evolutionist Economics would promote the kind of development that, as has been previously discussed, constitutes the arc of Human History--the progressive efforts of the species of an Adaptation Of its environment, facilitated by novelties such as a versatile thumb, spanning the sewing of the first clothing, and the rubbing together of two stones to produce fire, to the Apollo mission that lands a Human on the Moon.  Now, very little of such a doctrine is evident in Smith's system, with the closest approximation--Division of Labor--undercut by an emphasis on Market activity as a means to accumulating individual Wealth.  Marxism comes closer, insofar as it promotes a collectivization of ownership of the Human environment, only to revert to the Capitalist goal of individual leisure.  However, Marx and Engels do implicitly present a better approximation of Evolutionist values--as collaborators, in conjunction with those who help publish and spread their writings.  Those efforts anticipate the Collectivist Techne that has characterized Human Evolution.  Still, to date, an Evolutionist Economics is no more than a hypothetical alternative to the two doctrines that have dominated recent Human history.  But, given that between Darwin's discoveries of pre-Human Natural History, and the Human extraterrestrial ventures, Evolutionism has become the most comprehensive concept of the species, from which it follows that the Economic doctrine that it entails is now the most relevant one, with respect to which Capitalism and Socialism are becoming obsolete.

Adaptation and Techne

Adaptation To and Adaptation Of are combined in Techne.  The sharpness of an axe is an Adaptation To the hardness of a tree, the knowledge of which is a pre-condition for an Adaptation Of a tree, via chopping it down, for building, a fireplace, etc.  Likewise, Knowledge of the laws of Gravity and that the Earth spins on its axis, is a precondition for extraterrestrial travel.  In other words, Theoretical Knowledge is an Adaptation To, and putting it to use is an Adaptation Of, the combination of which is Techne, i. e. Knowing-How.  Plainly, that combination has been the motor of Human history, especially the past 500 years, with a potential transcending of its original environment already underway.  So, Techne is an integral factor in Human-Earth Adaptation, as Genesis 3 recognizes perhaps better than Darwinists.

Copernican Revolution and Evolutionist Revolution

For reasons that have previously been discussed, the inversion of the traditional priority of Adaptation To and Adaptation Of can be characterized as an Evolutionist Revolution.  But, it can also be appreciated as a descendant of Kant's Copernican Revolution.  For, the latter signifies an inversion of the Epistemological relation between Subject and Object, i. e. from the traditional concept of Knowledge as an adaptation of Mind to World, to that of it as an adaptation of a manifold to Mental Categories.  Furthermore, Kant's  subsequent inversion of the traditional priority of Theory over Practice, entails the inversion of the priority of a mere representation of the World, over a concrete modification of it, though Kant himself seems not to recognize that extension of his concept of Copernican Revolution.  Accordingly, Evolutionism can be recognized as a continuation of a Modern tradition of the radicalization of the concept of Human that includes the innovations of Copernicus and Kant.

Adaptation, Survival, Evolution

The standard Biological concept of Adaptation has implicitly been that of Adaptation To, because the primacy of that in relation to Adaptation Of  has been taken for granted.  Underlying that dogma is the deeply-entrenched acceptance of the Survival principle, from which it follows that any Adaptation Of an Environment, e. g. cultivation of land, is ultimately a means to Adaptation To it, e. g. staying alive at that location.  However, those orientations are now challenged by the fact of Human departure from its terrestrial environment, which demonstrates that the Adaptation Of the resources of that environment is not necessarily a means to the Adaptation To it.  More generally, the disambiguation of 'Adaptation' grounds that of 'Evolution', and the independence of the Evolutionist principle from the Survival principle, i. e. of increase from constancy.  Accordingly, the distinction between the two principles can be formulated as that between Adaptation Of and Adaptation To, respectively.

Adaptation To and Adaptation Of

In its usual usage, 'adaptation' connotes an extrinsic, unilateral, completed relation between an organism and an environment, as a means to its survival therein, e. g. 'Some marine organisms adapt to land by developing lungs in order to survive there'.  However, that usage involves three oversimplifications.  First, an Organism is constantly in interaction with some Environment, so, what is extrinsic to it is only a specific environment, e. g. water, land, etc., not an Environment per se.  Thus, second, Adaptation with a specific environment, but not per se, is ever completed.  Third, Adaptation can be either to or of an Environment, often simultaneously, e. g. oxygen inhaled by lungs adapted to the atmosphere is incorporated into an organism, and, hence, is a bilateral relation.  Now, Adaptation is not a fixed process, i. e. the quantity of adapted content is not fixed.  The significant example of that is the increase over the course of Human history, of its adaptation of its environment, i. e. its continuing development of the Earth.  Thus, because that adaptation is neither complete nor quantatively unchanging, its principle is not mere Survival, but Evolutionist, i. e. increase in complexity.