A transformational conception of evolutionary processes

• Author(s): Martins, Nuno O.
• Date: 2009
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.3/2309
• Origin: Repositório da Universidade dos Açores
• Subject(s): Transformational Conception of Social Activity; Evolutionary Processes; Economic Methodology; Technology; Social Structures
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

The transformational conception of social activity provides a non-deterministic Framework within which evolutionary models of natural selection can be located, and constitutes an alternative to sociological and economic traditions that adopt a deterministic conception of social processes, in which the causal effects of social structures, or technology, for example, are conceptualized in a deterministic way. Natural selection processes can be conceptualized as a more specific instance of this broad (non-deterministic) transformational conception, and hence can provide additional insight whenever addressing cases where a more specific model is required.