14 Innovation and Population

14.1 The Problem for Evolutionary Theories of Technology Change

According to one standard story, Darwin’s achievement is twofold (see, e.g., Sober 2003:
267; Waters 2003: 117–118). First, Darwin offers a view of the pattern of biological
change; namely descent with modifi cation. Second, he gives us a mechanism for how a
signifi cant proportion of that change—including, especially, adaptive change—occurs.
That mechanism is natural selection. Against an intellectual background that sees each
species as specially created by a benefi cent intelligence, these claims are radical, for they
deny both the pattern and the process underlying special creation.
Evolutionary models of technological innovation and change come in many forms.
Some of the best-known works in this area include books by Basalla (1988) and
Mokyr (1990), and a collection of articles on the subject edited by Ziman (2000). To
illustrate some of the suspicions one might have about the value of evolutionary models
when applied in this domain, let us try to apply each of Darwin’s two insights to techno-
logical innovation and technological change. First, what does it mean to defend an evolu-
tionary view of the pattern of technological change? On the face of it this involves only
the claim that novel artifacts are not produced ex nihilo without infl uence from previous
artifact generations. Admittedly the recommendation always to look for ancestral forms
of either whole artifacts or their parts may be a useful heuristic on occasions, but the
problem here is that “great man” theories of innovation, and appeals to individual genius,
have been out of fashion for a very long time. Historians of technology will not be sur-
prised to learn that most of the great material innovations we may wish to study (Watt’s
steam engine, the Wright brothers’ airplane) have ancestors that at least partially resemble
them.
Second, what of the view that innovation proceeds by a form of natural selection? Once
again this threatens to be an underwhelming assertion, at least if we construe natural selec-
tion in a loose enough manner that permits us to swat away potential counterexamples
founded on disanalogies between the organic and technological realms (Lewens 2002).
Darwin himself used artifi cial selection to illustrate the principle of natural selection. In a

Tim Lewens