Ben Zhu
Delft University of Technology
PhD candidate at Delft University of Technology. My current research is multidisciplinary, engaging in the field of industrial ecology and data science. I am also interested in applying Darwinian evolution thinking into the field of sustainability.
It seems that whenever we talk about the term ‘evolution’, what we really mean is ‘change’ (Nikolić 2015). This is not wrong, but incomplete. The body of literature in evolution has gone beyond biology for... [ view full abstract ]
It seems that whenever we talk about the term ‘evolution’, what we really mean is ‘change’ (Nikolić 2015). This is not wrong, but incomplete. The body of literature in evolution has gone beyond biology for decades. It is quite extensive and known as Universal Darwinism. Universal Darwinian evolutionary framework offers the principles of variation, selection and replication (Dennett, 2005).
The field of Industrial Ecology studies the wicked interconnected environmental, biological, social, economic, and technical systems. Changes in those systems are utterly complex, they seem to come ‘out of nowhere’ and nobody seems to oversee and control them. We believe our field has a lack of understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms in socio-technical systems; Coherent micro-foundations of socio-technological theories are missed. Who or what is replicated? What are the selection factors which produce fitness or replication? What is the role of repetition, or the ‘replication’ of the process through time? Understanding these core mechanisms of evolution in socio-technical systems could help the field of Industrial Ecology to increase fundamental understandings of change.
This research tries to take into account theories and critics from a broad spectrum of disciplines from evolutionary economy, cultural evolution, and complexity system modelling, to conceptualize and test hypotheses of the micro-foundations of a socio-technological theory of evolution. Hypotheses will be tested by agent based modelling and real world reflections. If the principles of evolution are explored in the substrate of Industrial Ecology, then more insights of 'change' in these complex systems could be gained. A better understanding of the 'change' in these complex systems could help us to combat global challenges and speed up sustainable evolution of consumption and production systems.
References:
Dennett, Daniel C. (2005), Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Touchstone Press, New York. pp. 352–360.
Nikolić, I. 2015. IE = Industrial Evolution? Journal of Industrial Ecology 19(2): 198–200.
• Complexity, resilience and sustainability , • Advances in methods (e.g., life cycle assessment, social impact assessment, resilience a
