In biology, “evolution” is defined as being the process involving changes of the heritable characteristics of a population over time.
Corporations pass all manner of things on to other companies—including resouces, employees, business methods, intellectual property, documents, premises, computer programs, etc. We are not talking about just a few bits of analog information here—often vast quantities of digital resources are involved.
Corporations form a population. Frequencies of instances of the above listed items in that population varies over time.
Therefore the population of corporations evolves—in the spirit of the classical biological sense of the term.
That’s microevolution. Can you imagine anything like macroevolution in this case? Like, we dig, dig, dig, and there’s a fossil corporation. We dig, dig, dig some more, and there’s a fossil something that could have evolved into that corporation from above, but fundametally different?
No, it is about reconstruction. Bad enough that population is a general term. If there is a sequence of hereditable and recombinant features in corporations, then ok, call them population. If there is a way of novel—like, somethingtththat would change the whole scene and ensure an emergence of a previously unimaginable body plan, then I’ll grant you evolution. Until then—don’t mix nature and human design.
The process of cumulative change over successive generations through which organisms acquire their distinguishing morphological and physiological characteristics.
No, you will have it after the changes are shown to be in the next few generations. And corporations aren’t biological objects. If you apply the term to them, re-define it.
In biology, “evolution” is defined as being the process involving changes of the heritable characteristics of a population over time.
Corporations pass all manner of things on to other companies—including resouces, employees, business methods, intellectual property, documents, premises, computer programs, etc. We are not talking about just a few bits of analog information here—often vast quantities of digital resources are involved.
Corporations form a population. Frequencies of instances of the above listed items in that population varies over time.
Therefore the population of corporations evolves—in the spirit of the classical biological sense of the term.
That’s microevolution. Can you imagine anything like macroevolution in this case? Like, we dig, dig, dig, and there’s a fossil corporation. We dig, dig, dig some more, and there’s a fossil something that could have evolved into that corporation from above, but fundametally different?
Evolution isn’t about digging.
No, it is about reconstruction. Bad enough that population is a general term. If there is a sequence of hereditable and recombinant features in corporations, then ok, call them population. If there is a way of novel—like, somethingtththat would change the whole scene and ensure an emergence of a previously unimaginable body plan, then I’ll grant you evolution. Until then—don’t mix nature and human design.
If I do genetic engineering to change around a few genes I’m engaging in human design but I still have evolution.
The NIH definition of biological evolution is:
No, you will have it after the changes are shown to be in the next few generations. And corporations aren’t biological objects. If you apply the term to them, re-define it.