The I-space as an evolutionary framework for an economics of knowledge : a comparison with generalized Darwinism

[摘要] The knowledge economy is regarded by many authorities and policymakers as a significant andburgeoning aspect of the global economy. Yet there is no adequate theory of the production andexchange of knowledge; there is no adequate microeconomics of knowledge. In his 1995 work,titled Information Space, Max Boisot responds to this theoretical challenge by undertaking a boldand insightful project to lay the groundwork for just such an economics of knowledge. Boisot'sproject entails two outcomes: an interwoven set of paradigmatic-ontological antecedents as aphilosophical foundation; and a general theoretical framework, the Information-space (I-space),for understanding the economising principles that underlie the creation and distribution ofinformation and knowledge. Boisot does not put forward an economics of knowledge per se.Rather, he sets out to lay the philosophical and general theoretical foundations for such aneconomic theory.Among Boisot's paradigmatic-ontological antecedents is a commitment to evolutionary thinking.This is extended and adopted as a more specific commitment in the explication of the I-space.Thus, Boisot's commitment to evolution is not trivial, and the I-space should be evolutionary in astrict sense. This thesis focuses on the I-space as an evolutionary framework and is a conceptualassessment of the I-space in relation to generalized Darwinism as the dominant contemporaryconception of what it means to be evolutionary. The I-space is taken seriously as an explanatoryframework, but it is assessed on its own terms as a general theory that is not amenable to aPopperian refutationist assessment. Thus, the I-space is construed as a putative evolutionaryexplanatory framework for an economics of knowledge.Contemporary evolutionary thinking has a long history, and is both pluralistic and polemical.However, a generalized Darwinian framework is discernable in the various applications ofDarwinism in biology, evolutionary economics and evolutionary epistemology, and in thediscourse of generalized Darwinism. The derivation – or extraction – of such a framework andits set of criteria is, nevertheless, a challenging task since it is not always clear what evolutionand Darwinism entail conceptually, and there is no unanimity of opinion in the literature. Thisthesis is an attempt to identify the core logical criteria of generalized Darwinism that may beused to assess the I-space as a putative global evolutionary explanation.Though it does incorporate, or satisfy, many of the criteria identified, the I-space fails to satisfytwo of them, and this thesis therefore concludes that the I-space is not a global generalizedDarwinian framework. Firstly, and most importantly in terms of the conceptual hierarchy of generalized Darwinism, the I-space defines ex ante a finite set of attributes – degree ofabstraction and degree of codification – as constitutive of global fitness. In other words, itregards the traits of abstraction and codification to be both necessary and sufficient to explain thedifferential diffusion of knowledge. Although evolutionary theory is of predictive value in localevolutionary situations, it is argued in this thesis that it is inadmissible in a global Darwinianevolutionary situation to specify ex ante the selection criteria in terms of a finite set of traits andto predict global evolutionary outcomes on that basis. In doing so, the I-space ignores theinherent contingency of the evolutionary process. More specifically, it ignores the contingencyof knowledge creation and diffusion in a varied and changing environment, and makesexogenous to the I-space other factors that may also be of selective significance. Secondly, andclosely related, is that the I-space does not define populations according to shared exposure toselection pressure; rather, knowledge is stratified according to shared attributes along the I-spacedimensions of abstraction and codification. This presents a conceptual problem for the I-space,since it is conceivable that knowledge objects of the same degree of abstraction and codificationmay be directed at entirely different phenomenal domains and thus cannot be taken to becompeting; conversely, knowledge objects of different degrees of abstraction and codificationmay be directed at the same phenomena and should thus be taken as competing.The primary implication of this outcome is that, from a Darwinian point of view, the I-space, as alocal evolutionary explanation, cannot serve as a general theory for an evolutionary economics ofknowledge. It may give rise to other local theories, but it will not support the development of aneconomics of knowledge that would operate at a higher level of generality than the I-space. Asecond implication, also from a strict Darwinian point of view, is that evolutionary generaltheory may be explanatory, but it may not be predictive; evolutionary theories may indeedpredict at the local level, but not at the global level. The final implication is that the search for amicroeconomics of knowledge continues, and will become more urgent as the knowledge economy unfolds, and as our ability to quantify it improves.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University