|
|
Article: Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship," its cognitive foundations, and some implications for economic theory.
- Article from:
- Journal of Economic Issues
- Article date:
- March 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Association for Evolutionary Economics. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Chief among those instinctive dispositions that conduce directly to the material well-being of the race, and therefore to its biological success, is perhaps the instinctive bias here spoken of as the sense of workmanship.
--Veblen
In the early twentieth century, economic and social theory were enriched by a Darwin-inspired approach. A major contributor to this line of reasoning about socio-economic evolution was Thorstein Veblen (see Hodgson 2004, part III). This article will show how lost arguments from Veblenian thought can be combined with insights delivered by cognitive science to tackle some of the theoretical problems of today's economics.