KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:
1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
- The presentation language is English.
- If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.
Event Details
Topic description / abstract:
Many believe that what Adam Smith said about the improving power of market competition is similar to what Darwin said about the improving power of natural selection. But how similar are Smith's and Darwin's ideas really? To answer this question, I'll compare two "fundamental" theorems—the fundamental theorem of natural selection and the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics. The theorems have more in common than their names; I have chosen to compare them because they are often taken to precisify (respectively) the way in which selection and market competition can lead to improvement. After characterizing the sense in which the theorems are indeed similar, I go on to show that the theorems' idealizations obscure some important points of contact between Smith's ideas and Darwin's, particularly concerning the benefits of division of labor.
Biographical note:
Brian McLoone works primarily in philosophy of biology. At the moment, he is working on a project about the relationship between natural selection and ideas in political economy and also on a project concerning how to logically represent counterfactual reasoning in science. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2016, and he is currently an instructor at Auburn University (USA).
