Even though the market is not treated as existing independently of the social and cultural framework, and there was no consensus on just what sort of animal the market “really” is, the neoliberals did agree that for purposes of public understanding and sloganeering, market society must be treated as a “natural” and inexorable state of humankind. What this meant in practice is that natural science metaphors must be integrated into the neoliberal narrative. It is noteworthy that MPS members began to explore the portrayal of the market as an evolutionary phenomenon long before biology displaced physics as the premier science in the modern world-picture. If the market was just an information processor, so too was the gene in its ecological niche. Because of this early commitment, neoliberalism was able to make appreciable inroads into such areas as evolutionary psychology, network sociology, ecology, animal ethology, linguistics, cybernetics, and even science studies.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 2127