Unless you have been asleep, you will have noticed that 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. Evolution is one of the most seminal of scientific ideas. Yet the application of evolutionary approaches to problems of business, politics and society has been slow.

That application took two false steps. Herbert Spencer, the 19th-century philosopher, coined the striking phrase “survival of the fittest”. A bundle of associated ideas was thereafter widely but probably unjustly attributed to Spencer. It included a Panglossian conservatism. Whatever might happen was generally both inevitable and desirable. It also justified the assertion that social and economic organisation should be based on aggressive pursuit of self-interest.