North on unpredictable history, Darwin and Lincoln

Gary North ranges from a poetic opening to his usually-prescient analysis in talking about Darwin and Lincoln at LewRockwell.com...

First, the opening:

Two hundred years ago today, the sun rose over the English village of Shrewsbury. Susannah Darwin was about to give birth to her fifth child, Charles. Her husband Robert was a financier. Her father was a Wedgewood, of pottery fame. Times were not tough in the Darwin household.

The sun moved over the Atlantic, heading for Hardin County, Kentucky. Later in the day – the Darwins' day, anyway – it passed over the log cabin of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, whose son Abraham had just been born. Times were always tough in the Lincoln household.

All in all, it was a memorable day, if not for the sun, then for the rest of us.

North notes the relative obscurity of both men-- until 1860-- and Lincoln's nomination for President and Darwin's book gaining traction and fame. From there, North focuses on their impact:

At the time of Darwin's death in 1882, Darwin's book, along with his follow-up book, The Descent of Man (1871), had conquered the intellectual world. His theory of evolution through natural selection was re-shaping legal theory. One piece of evidence is Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s, book, The Common Law (1881).

Equally affected was the new science of sociology. Social Darwinism had become a major intellectual movement. There were two camps. A laissez-faire camp was led by Herbert Spencer, who coined a phrase that Darwin adopted in later editions of Origin: "the survival of the fittest." Opposed to him was Lester Frank Ward, who believed that Darwinian science gives a scientific and educational elite the ability and therefore the legal right to plan society. Both men appealed to Darwin's theory as justification.

Lincoln's wartime policies re-shaped the politics of the United States. This transformation was reflected in a change of grammar. In 1860, men said "the United States are." After 1865, they said "the United States is."...

Then, North turns to broader observations about history, (un)predictability, how our fate is beyond our control or understanding, and what economists call "the knowledge problem" (and the extent to which this is solved by markets-- and is a stumbling block for govt policy). If you're interested in that combo, check out the article. For those who are not, I'll bring a few of North's words to the table:

Men are not omniscient. They are bounded by uncertainty. The free market offers a way to deal with this uncertainty: entrepreneurship. Men of necessity must face the future. They do their best to see what is coming. They delegate to specialists in forecasting the responsibility of allocating resources for future production. Then consumers bid against each other for these goods and services. By their bids, they bless certain entrepreneurs with profits, but thereby curse others with losses....