{
    "href": "/post/2004/10/25/adam-smith-and-charles-darwin/",
    "relId": "2004/10/25/adam-smith-and-charles-darwin",
    "title": "Adam Smith and Charles Darwin",
    "author": "pmjones",
    "markup": "html",
    "tags": [
        {
            "href": "/tag/emergence/",
            "relId": "emergence",
            "title": "Emergence",
            "author": null,
            "created": null,
            "updated": [],
            "markup": "markdown"
        }
    ],
    "created": "2004-10-25 14:33:17 UTC",
    "updated": [
        "2004-10-25 14:33:17 UTC"
    ],
    "html": "<p>This brief entry from <a href=\"http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2004/10/smith_and_darwi.html\">Cafe Hayek</a> about the Scottish Enlightenment is, ah, enlightening, especially when read in the context of emergent behaviors.</p>\n<blockquote><p>About Stewart's intellectual biography of Adam Smith, Gould has this to say: \"[Darwin] imbibed the basic belief of the Scottish economists that theories of overall social structure must begin by analyzing the unconstrained actions of individuals ... The theory of natural selection is a creative transfer to biology of Adam Smith's basic argument for a rational economy: the balance and order of nature does not arise from a higher, external (divine) control, or from the existence of laws operating directly upon the whole, but from struggle among individuals for their own benefits.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing; it's short and sweet.  (I know a family of Scots, and let me tell you, the intelligence and creative thinking displayed by Smith and Adams has not dwindled over the intervening generations.)</p>\n"
}