Thorstein Veblen, the evolution of the predatory instinct, and the origins of agriculture

Abstract

This article attempts to take Veblenian instinct analysis more seriously than is usually done in the institutionalist literature by providing a detailed investigation of how Thorstein Veblen understood the operation of one particular instinct, what he called the predatory instinct. It documents the nature of the predatory instinct, its evolutionary origin, its mode of operation, and various forms of its economic expression across geological time. It also explores various hypothesized relations between the predatory instinct and both the Neolithic origins of agriculture and the processes of animal domestication. It then evaluates Veblen’s formulation of these topics in relation to recent anthropological accounts of the evolution of the cognitive capacity of Homo hominids across both the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of human prehistory.