Abstract

The background to this paper is as follows. In 1998 Glen Whitman published a paper in Constitutional Political Economy called ‘Hayek contra Pangloss on Evolutionary Systems’. At the same time and unaware of Whitman’s work, I posted my draft PhD chapter ‘Friedrich Hayek: a Panglossian evolutionary theorist’ (Denis, 2001, contains the final version) on my web page. Alain Albert (personal communication), having read the PhD chapter, drew my attention to Whitman’s article, and the result was a paper ‘Was Hayek a Panglossian Evolutionary Theorist? A Reply to Whitman’ in the same journal in 2002. This in turn led to Whitman’s ‘Hayek Contra Pangloss: A Rejoinder’, also in Constitutional Political Economy, in December 2003. Now read on ….