ECONOMICS AND BIOLOGY: SPECIALIZATION AND SPECIATION

It is well known that Charles Darwin's work on evolution, according to his own statement, was partly inspired by Malthus' theory of population. To this extent economics may therefore count itself among the sources of modern biology. Apart from this initial link, however, economics has had less contact with biology than with almost any other major science. With the physical sciences, particularly classical mechanics and thermodynamics, economics at least has some conscious affinity of method, and with the social sciences it shares the subject matter (though little else), but with biology it appears to have nothing in common. It would be presumptuous for an economist to argue that closer relations between economics and biology would benefit the other field. All I want to point out here is that economists may derive some useful insight from observation of the non-human living world. This is particularly true for that much-neglected but centrally important chapter of economics: the division of labor, or specialization as it may be more appropriately called in the present context. Specialization, as we shall see, is closely, connected with what biologists call speciation, or the formation of species…