Ninety-nine percent of all animal species that ever lived are extinct, doomed because they had evolved into niches that were destroyed when environmental changes occurred too fast for them to adapt. We humans have survived so far because we evolved as non-specialists: our large brains permit adaptation to change without waiting for evolution to alter our…
Richard G. Lipsey
Richard G. Lipsey is emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University. His recent book Economic Transformations: General Purpose Technologies and Long-Term Economic Growth (Oxford University Press, 2005) won the Joseph Schumpeter prize for the best writing on evolutionary economics over the two years prior to its publication.