>
> If so, why is this conflation of
> > human constructs and nature so marginal, while others - sociobiology and
> > evolutionary psychology, for example - occupy center stage?
>
> Not sure what you are asking here.
>
Thank you for your reply. Here I was distinguishing bioeconomics from
sociobiology in general. Since I don't even know what bioeconomics is yet,
I ought not start to pontificate on it, but from what I've seen bioeconomics
can be different from traditional sociobiology. Viewing organisms as competing
economic agents - little capitalist firms, so far as I can tell - avoids
the pervasive reductionism to genes (or to memes) and the assumptions of
optimality of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and memetics. The bits and
fragments of the bioeconomics authors I've seen seem on one hand far less
close-minded than, say, Dawkins or Dennett; open to the idea of hierarchical
levels of interaction and causation, to the idea of historical contingency,
to the idea of self-organization; but at the same time comically wed to the
language of captitalism - describing the "capital" and "income" of organisms.
Assumimg (!) my interpretation is correct, I was just idly wondering why
a bioeconomic approach to biology - an overt identification of nature and
capitalism - would not be more popular, while what seem to be covert and wildly
reductionist approaches - sociobiology, evolutionary psychology - are popular
and have a fanatic following.
But I should avoid offering so many opinions on bioeconomics when I know almost
nothing about it!
Paul
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