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Download or read book Foundations of Evolutionary Economics, Chapter Two, Causality written by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an entirely new draft of the second chapter of my book “Foundations of Evolutionary Economics” which is going to be published by Edward Elgar in due course. With permission of the publisher, the draft chapters are posted on the web to facilitate academic discussion for further improvement. A full summary of Chapter Two can be found at the beginning of the main text. I propose a physical conception of knowledge that builds on basic ontological propositions about the relation between regularities and singularities in the world, which is approached in naturalistic terms. The evolution of knowledge is analyzed in the framework of Peirce's triadism, that is, the conjunction of the three causal modes (efficient, formal and final). The paradigmatic model for this conjunction is the 'function' as a special form of physical causality. Building on an energetic conception of causality, I relate triadism with the Maximum Entropy approach to open non-equilibrium systems: In this view, evolution is a direct physical expression of the Second Law. In the context of evolutionary analysis, two special kinds of functions play a central role, replication and autocatalysis. Overview of book contents • Chapter 1: Ontology • Chapter 2: Causality • Chapter 3: Evolution • Chapter 4: Individuals • Chapter 5: Networks • Chapter 6: Institutions • Chapter 7: Technology • Chapter 8: Markets.