| Abstract: | The generation, acceptance and diffusion of innovations underlies the processes of improving social and economic conditions. They occur or are quashed not in technocratic isolation, however, but in political negotiations between people with possibly divergent interests and probably unequal power.After reviewing the Diffusionist school of thought, the paper explores the possibility of explaining innovations through an evolutionary model, comprising elements of random variation, selection and amplification. The model has the attraction of assuming that man has some influence over his future and is not merely an object of history and other impersonal ‘forces’.The paper considers the innovatory situation and reviews the relevance of decision theory, probability, uncertainty, risk and the politics of acceptance. It concludes that, although man is constrained by many limitations of information, understanding and reasoning, and may be both reactionary and radical, he continues to experiment with the unknown and so continues to learn. |
