Abstract:
Paul David’s 1986 exposition on the QWERTY keyboard configuration gave rise not only to
Stan Leibowitz and Stephen Margolis’s “Fable of the Keys”, but also to a consideration by
Stephen J. Gould of the characteristics, and correct attribution, of Lamarckian versus
Darwinian mechanisms of evolutionary change. This study draws attention to the following
issues from this debate: is it correct to attribute the operation of forces of change in
evolutionary economics as being Darwinian in nature? How did evolutionary dynamics in
economics come to be described utilising concepts and nomenclature typical of organic or
biological evolution? It is suggested that it was the extension of Veblen’s advocacy of
Darwinism as a “scientific methodology” which led to the adoption of Darwinism as an icon
of evolutionary mechanisms, and gave rise to the invocation of Darwinian evolutionary
mechanisms in economic theories. The basis for such invocation is reexamined
and it is
suggested the Lamarckian theory provides the more appropriate mechanism for evolutionary
success or fitness in economic studies.
