On the difficulty of evolutionary analysis

Thorstein Veblen's 100-year-old question—‘Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?’—remains relevant. Evolutionary analysis, even for those social scientists who trace their intellectual heritage to evolutionary thought, has been difficult for three reasons: effective incorporation of time requires a respectful and detailed treatment of the past; dominant social science paradigms have made it difficult to account for novelty; and concern with policy and current issues of social debate creates a tendency towards taxonomy. The twentieth-century history of economic anthropology and institutional economics illustrates that a failure to overcome these difficulties leaves Veblen's vision unfulfilled.