Purpose of the paper: This paper aims to go beyond a bookkeeping approach to evolutionary analysis whereby surviving firms are better adapted and extinct firms were less adapted. From discussion of the preliminary findings of research into the Hobart pizza industry, evidence is presented of the need to adopt a more traditional approach to applying evolutionary theories with organizational resea...

This special issue highlights the contribution ofthe lay theories approach to the study ofgroups. Six articles address the nature, development, and consequences ofa variety oflay theories for group perception and behavior. First, these articles illuminate the structural, functional, and dynamic properties of lay theories as well as their scope. Second, the articles address the development of la...

The dynamics/computation debate recalls a similar debate in the evolutionary biology community concerning the relative primacy of theories of structure versus theories of change. A full account of cognition will require a rapprochement between such theories and will include both computational and dynamical notions. The key to making computation relevant to cognition is not making it analog, but...

our ancestors without fear, worry and anxiety are not our ancestors, as organisms without defense systems were extinct. therefore, while behavior such as fear and anxiety are useful to prevent harm, the exaggerated form, that is, anxiety disorders, has more costs than benefits. likewise, while a panic attack is a normal and useful response in the face of life-threatening danger, a panic disorde...

The existing field theories are based on the properties of closed exterior forms, which are invariant ones and correspond to conservation laws for physical fields. Hence, to understand the foundations of field theories and their unity, one has to know how such closed exterior forms are obtained. In the present paper it is shown that closed exterior forms corresponding to field theories are obta...

Cognitive psychology has an opportunity to turn itself into a theoretically rigorous discipline in which a powerful set of theories organize observations and suggest focused new hypotheses. This cannot happen, however, as long as intuition and folk psychology continue to set our research agenda. This is because intuition systematically blinds us to the full universe of problems our minds sponta...

The paper discusses a critical realist interpretation of evolutionary growth theorising by focusing on some of its basic characteristics. The evolutionary ontology is complex, differentiated, structured, systemic, open, ever-changing and radically uncertain. Its methodology tends to be increasingly based on ‘appreciative’ theorising, retroductive explanations and interdisciplinary analysis. Aft...

This paper presents a set of theories of localised resource-based growth and development that have helped analysts and policy makers to consider if and how alternative employment can be promoted in relation to the natural-resource-based industries that show a rapid decrease of employment in many regions. Marshall’s theory of industrial evolution and industrial districts has especially emphasise...

Theories of the evolutionary origins of language must be informed by empirical and theoretical results from a variety of different fields. Complementing recent surveys of relevant work from linguistics, animal behaviour and genetics, this paper surveys the requirements on evolutionary scenarios that derive from mathematical evolutionary biology. It presents a number of simple but fundamental mo...