In the current milieu, where the extraordinary by-product of evolution by random variation and environmental selection is the subject of debate, it is also relevant that commerce generates an extraordinary world for all of us who live in it.
The human context we live in is a creation of commerce.
Commerce doesn’t map directly to Darwinian evolution. Multiple forces drive commerce, from self interest to technology, cost reduction, curiosity, communal needs, artistic impulse, compassion, etc. Once the artifacts of commerce are created they are winnowed out in a selection process where the environment, the market, is the determinant of survival. The survival part of commerce has some similarities to Darwinian evolution.
Both processes generate extraordinary variety, almost unimaginable, and certainly inconceiveable as an emperically understandable process.
I don’t propose to wax philosophical but I do think we could do well to think about the variety of other processes that are simple, selective and produce wondrous outcomes. The only two that come to my mind that have been explicated are ‘chaos’ which is generated by the equation (x+b) to the power x-1 and the world of fractals; the fractal generator is (a+b) to the 1.2 power.
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