Between a rock and a hard place: second thoughts on Laibman's Deep History and the theory of punctuated equilibrium with regard to intellectual evolution

Altug Yalcintas

doi:10.46298/jpe.10639

Altug Yalcintas - Between a rock and a hard place: second thoughts on Laibman's Deep History and the theory of punctuated equilibrium with regard to intellectual evolution

jpe:10639 - Journal of Philosophical Economics, November 20, 2012, Volume VI Issue 1 - https://doi.org/10.46298/jpe.10639

Between a rock and a hard place: second thoughts on Laibman's Deep History and the theory of punctuated equilibrium with regard to intellectual evolutionArticle

Authors: Altug Yalcintas ¹

1 Ankara University

In this article I reconsider Laibman’s Deep History (2007) in the light of Niles Eldredge and Stephan Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. I argue that the theory of punctuated equilibrium explains (1) why conceptions of inevitability and directionality in intellectual evolution may not be as useful as Laibman thinks they are in the context of social evolution and (2) why stasis (that is, intellectual path dependence) in intellectual evolution does not allow different pathways of thought to converge.

https://doi.org/10.46298/jpe.10639

Source: HAL:hal-03705699v1

Volume: Volume VI Issue 1

Section: Articles

Published on: November 20, 2012

Imported on: December 28, 2022

Keywords: punctuated equilibrium,continual progress,perfection,intellectual path dependence,[SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences

Licence: Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)