More devolution than evolution

Responding on LinkedIn Global Foresight thread… on changes in the economic rules.

The idea that economic change develops from local innovation, like biological evolution, is also a general rule for all other environmental processes.  Change is distributed and developmental in general, and *does not actually follow formulas*.

The traditional natural science paradigm has tried to always explain things with formulas, as was so successful with mechanics and planetary motion.   For complex systems with evolving parts like economics, it just doesn’t make sense.

So, the new rule is looking for new rules, not for the permanent ones, for where change is developing and the old rules won’t apply.

It’s a big subject obviously, but the kind of systems physics that truly informs economics is not that of Stephen Wolfram or any of the other old school systems theorists.  They all try to fix their inability to find general rules for nature by making smaller and smaller rules ones.   Continue reading More devolution than evolution