Matt Ridley on "The Natural Order of Things"

Gerry Ohrstrom, who I mentioned in Thursday’s entry, forwarded a link to an article by libertarian and evolutionary psychology popularizer Matt Ridley, who argues that biology, economic development, and technology can all be seen as (in some sense) evolving over time (when left free to do so).  Ridley is a widely respected and popular science writer in the UK — so it’s not just me seeing some libertarian/e.p. parallels, and as I’ll explore in a bit more detail this coming week, more than a few major evolutionary psychology theorists are libertarians or close to it.

On a less econ-oriented note, I can’t help thinking that evolutionary thinking may help explain why some (usually less-evolutionarily-savvy) people instinctively (or culturally) react to homosexuality as if it is a dire, existential threat, an attitude I’ve rarely observed among libertarians — but more on libertarians (including Bob Barr) and gays tomorrow, just in time for the Oscars.