Abstract
Friedrich Hayek and Kinji Imanishi were moving in different directions in their treatment of Darwinism. In this chapter, Geoffrey Hodgson focuses on Hayek’s treatment of the Darwinian selection concept, his embrace of group selection, his stress on self-organization and his claim that social evolution is ‘Lamarckian.’ Hodgson concludes that there were some enduring shortcomings in Hayek’s approach, although his insights on group selection were superior to those of Imanishi. On the other hand, Imanishi was right to suggest that Hayek’s definition of instinct is too vague. But while Imanishi was right to point out that it is difficult to distinguish between innate and acquired dispositions, it is nevertheless necessary to do so. Imanishi was too much of a positivist and a behaviourist, who focused largely on overt behaviours.
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Hodgson, G.M. (2017). Crossing Paths: On Hayek’s Darwinian Evolutionism. In: Hayek: A Collaborative Biography. Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61714-5_13
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