Progress by selective death rates

I keep returning to the view I expressed in my PhD thesis ‘Trial and Error and the Idea of Progress.’ The idea that progress is made by a selective 'death' rate in fields like science, business, sport and elsewhere rests on the principle that advancement often depends on the failure and replacement of outdated or unfit ideas, entities, or organisms. Old theories must ‘die’ or be abandoned for newer, more useful ones to take hold. It mirrors the way that evolution in nature has new organisms replacing ones less capable of surviving and reproducing.

Scientists entrenched in an older worldview resist change, and progress sometimes waits until a new generation emerges. As physicist Max Planck said “Science progresses one funeral at a time.” The ‘death’ here is metaphorical in that it refers to the rejection or obsolescence of prior beliefs or frameworks.

In economics, Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction captures how innovation kills off outdated business models and companies. Typewriters gave way to word processors, and Blockbuster was replaced by Netflix. The ‘death’ of less adaptive firms frees up resources, whether of capital, talent, or market share for more dynamic newcomers. Failure is not wasteful in this view; it is an essential for economic vitality and growth.

In biology evolution requires differential survival. Less fit organisms are less likely to survive and reproduce, while fitter variants proliferate. Species that cannot adapt go extinct, and new ones emerge better suited to changing environments. Over time, this selective death rate leads to the astonishing complexity and adaptation we see in nature. Without extinction or selection, evolution in terms of adaptation would stall or stagnate.

There is no progress in nature’s evolution as there is in fields such as scientific enquiry, business activity or other human-designated areas because outside of natural evolution we pursue man-made goals. The aim of science is to be better able to predict what we shall observe. In economic activity it is to maximize utility and make more efficient use of resources, including labour.

It is because we designate goals that we can speak of making progress towards them. Without goals there is no progress. In human activities progress depends on failure or elimination, be it in science, business, sport or any area with designated goals.

Not all progress requires destruction; some systems can integrate or reform rather than eliminate. That is, they can adopt the methodology of innovators and survive, but only if their old ways ‘die’ in the process. When scientific theories are merely modified to incorporate new observations, they can die the death of a thousand modifications. When failing businesses are protected by subsidies or tariffs, would-be progress and utility maximization is thwarted.

Selective attrition, when poorly adapted or outdated models give way to better ones, is widely recognized as a powerful driver of long-term progress towards human-designated goals.

Madsen Pirie