The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Gould's punctuate equilibrium is often portrayed as like some revolutionary overturning of darwinism, which he never said it was. Gould: The key proposition that individuals acting on their own self interest can't end up making other people better off. But i thinkth the crux of smith's contribution was precisely to provide a causal story with a mechanism. And what smith showed was that the mechanism was competition carried out in markets. I think that's why smith's book was recognized. It was immediately. Smith died only 14 years after his book was published. He became an celebrity.

In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.