"The principles of Darwinism, which involve variation, inheritance, and selection, are increasingly of interest to social scientists. But no one has provided a truly rigorous account of how the principles apply to the evolution of human society--until now. In Darwin's Conjecture, Geoffrey M. Hodgson and Thorbj²rn Knudsen reveal how these core concepts apply to a wide range of social phenomena, including business practices, legal systems, technology, and even science itself. They also critique some prominent objections to applying Darwin to social science, arguing that ultimately Darwinism functions as a general theoretical framework for stimulating further inquiry. Social scientists who adopt a Darwinian approach, they contend, can then use it to develop new explanatory theories and predictive models. This truly pathbreaking work at long last makes the powerful conceptual tools of Darwin available to the social sciences and will be welcomed by scholars and students from a range of disciplines."--BOOK JACKET.