Models of Mechanisms: The Case of the Replicator Dynamics - Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics - page 95

no abstract mechanism that is instantiated by the biological and learning
mechanisms, and consequently the RD cannot represent such a mechanism.
7 Conclusions
The general RD is a model that is used in biology to represent biological
mechanisms and in the social sciences to represent social mechanisms. Substantial
idealisations have to be made for these purposes - idealisations that differ for the
respective disciplines. These create a considerable idealisation gap between the
BRD and the learning interpretations of the RD. This gap is sufficiently large to
conclude that the general RD does not represent an abstract mechanism that
subsumes both the biological and the social cases. Just like the duck-rabbit image
does not represent the essence of both duck and rabbit, but rather either a duck or a
rabbit (depending on what idealisations one accepts), so the general RD represents
either biological or social mechanisms, but not the shared causal structure of both.
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