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2017, Nature Ecology & Evolution
The founding members of the Cultural Evolution Society were surveyed to identify the major scientific questions and 'grand challenges' currently facing the study of cultural evolution. We present the results and discuss the implications for an emergent synthesis in the study of culture based on Darwinian principles.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2006
We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in "social cognitive neuroscience," although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.
2020
Cultural evolution theory has long been inspired by evolutionary biology. Conceptual analogies between biological and cultural evolution have led to the adoption of a range of formal theoretical approaches from population dynamics and genetics. However, this has resulted in a research programme with a strong focus on cultural transmission. Here, we contrast biological with cultural evolution, and highlight aspects of cultural evolution that have not received sufficient attention previously. We outline possible implications for evolutionary dynamics and argue that not taking them into account will limit our understanding of cultural systems. We propose twelve key questions for future research, among which are calls to improve our understanding of the combinatorial properties of cultural innovation, and the role of development and life history in cultural dynamics. Finally, we discuss how this vibrant research field can make progress by embracing its multidisciplinary nature.
Darwin-inspired population thinking suggests approaching culture as a population of items of different types, whose relative frequencies may change over time. Three nested subtypes of populational models can be distinguished: evolutionary, selectional and replicative. Substantial progress has been made in the study of cultural evolution by modelling it within the selectional frame. This progress has involved idealizing away from phenomena that may be critical to an adequate understanding of culture and cultural evolution, particularly the constructive aspect of the mechanisms of cultural transmission. Taking these aspects into account, we describe cultural evolution in terms of cultural attraction, which is populational and evolutionary, but only selectional under certain circumstances. As such, in order to model cultural evolution, we must not simply adjust existing replicative or selectional models but we should rather generalize them, so that, just as replicator-based selection is one form that Darwinian selection can take, selection itself is one of several different forms that attraction can take. We present an elementary formalization of the idea of cultural attraction.
Cultural evolution studies are characterized by the notion that culture evolves accordingly to broadly Darwinian principles. Yet how far the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution should be pushed is open to debate. Here, we examine a recent disagreement that concerns the extent to which cultural transmission should be considered a preservative mechanism allowing selection among different variants, or a transformative process in which individuals recreate variants each time they are transmitted. The latter is associated with the notion of ''cultural attraction''. This issue has generated much misunderstanding and confusion. We first clarify the respective positions, noting that there is in fact no substantive incompatibility between cultural attraction and standard cultural evolution approaches , beyond a difference in focus. Whether cultural transmission should be considered a preservative or reconstructive process is ultimately an empirical question, and we examine how both preservative and reconstructive cultural transmission has been studied in recent experimental research in cultural evolution. Finally, we discuss how the relative importance of preservative and reconstructive processes may depend on the granularity of analysis and the domain being studied.
Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2011
This paper reviews and clarifies five misunderstandings about cultural evolution identified by Henrich et al. (2008). First, cultural representations are neither discrete nor continuous; they are distributed across neurons that respond to microfeatures. This enables associations to be made, and cultural change to be generated. Second, ‘replicator dynamics’ do not ensure natural selection. The replicator notion does not capture the distinction between actively interpreted self-assembly code and passively copied self-description, which leads to a fundamental principle of natural selection: inherited information is transmitted, whereas acquired information is not. Third, this principle is violated in culture by the ubiquity of acquired change. Moreover, biased transmission is less important to culture than the creative processes by which novelty is generated. Fourth, there is no objective basis for determining cultural fitness. Fifth, the necessity of randomness is discussed. It is con...
Futures, 1998
ABSTRACT This essay looks at the idea that human culture is an evolving system, a complex entity that undergoes evolutionary processes. This idea can also be expressed as follows: the cultural infosphere has the same mode of operation as the organic biosphere. There are three parts to the essay: it begins with some highlights from the history of evolutionary thinking; second, it explains the mechanisms of cultural selection; and third, it discusses the vision of the future provided by evolutionary thinking. The kind of evolutionary thinking focused upon is one that takes Charles Darwin seriously. The depth, reach and relevance of Darwinian thinking has been aptly exposed by Daniel C. Dennett,[1]and this essay assesses its worth in futures research.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Human cultural traits—behaviors, ideas, and technologies that can be learned from other individuals—can exhibit complex patterns of transmission and evolution, and researchers have developed theoretical models, both verbal and mathematical, to facilitate our understanding of these patterns. Many of the first quantitative models of cultural evolution were modified from existing concepts in theoretical population genetics because cultural evolution has many parallels with, as well as clear differences from, genetic evolution. Furthermore, cultural and genetic evolution can interact with one another and influence both transmission and selection. This interaction requires theoretical treatments of gene–culture coevolution and dual inheritance, in addition to purely cultural evolution. In addition, cultural evolutionary theory is a natural component of studies in demography, human ecology, and many other disciplines. Here, we review the core concepts in cultural evolutionary theory as th...
Culture pervades human lives and has allowed our species to create niches all around the world and its oceans, in ways quite unlike any other primate. Indeed, our cultural nature appears so distinctive that it is often thought to separate humanity from the rest of nature and the Darwinian forces that shape it. A contrary view arises through the recent discoveries of a diverse range of disciplines, here brought together to illustrate the scope of a burgeoning field of cultural evolution and to facilitate cross-disciplinary fertilization. Each approach emphasizes important linkages between culture and evolutionary biology rather than quarantining one from the other. Recent studies reveal that processes important in cultural transmission are more widespread and significant across the animal kingdom than earlier recognized, with important implications for evolutionary theory. Recent archaeological discoveries have pushed back the origins of human culture to much more ancient times than traditionally thought. These developments suggest previously unidentified continuities between animal and human culture. A third new array of discoveries concerns the later diversification of human cultures, where the operations of Darwinian-like processes are identified, in part, through scientific methods borrowed from biology. Finally, surprising discoveries have been made about the imprint of cultural evolution in the predispositions of human minds for cultural transmission.
Evolutionary models of cultural change have acquired an important role in attempts to explain the course of human evolution, especially our specialization in knowledge-gathering and intelligent control of environments. In both biological and cultural change, different patterns of explanation become relevant at different 'grains' of analysis and in contexts associated with different explanatory targets. Existing treatments of the evolutionary approach to culture, both positive and negative, underestimate the importance of these distinctions. Close attention to grain of analysis motivates distinctions between three possible modes of cultural evolution, each associated with different empirical assumptions and explanatory roles.
Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, 1992
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Evolutionary developmental theories in biology see the processes and organization of organisms as crucial for understanding the dynamic behavior of organic evolution. Darwinian forces are seen as necessary but not sufficient for explaining observed evolutionary patterns. We here propose that the same arguments apply with even greater force to culture vis-a-vis cultural evolution. In order not to argue entirely in the abstract, we demonstrate the proposed approach by combining a set of different models into a provisional synthetic theory, and by applying this theory to a number of short case studies. What emerges is a set of concepts and models that allow us to consider entirely new types of explanations for the evolution of cultures. For example we see how feedback relations -- both within societies and between societies and their ecological environment -- have the power to shape evolutionary history in profound ways. The ambition here is not to produce a definite statement on what such a theory should look like but rather to propose a starting point along with an argumentation and demonstration of its potential.
2010
Mesoudi et al. overlook an illuminating parallel between cultural and biological evolution, namely, the existence in each realm of a continuum from intelligent, mindful evolution through to oblivious, mindless evolution. In addition, they underplay the independence of cultural fitness from biological fitness. The assumption that successful cultural traits enhance genetic fitness must be sidelined, as must the assumption that such traits will at least be considered worth having. Mesoudi et al. provide a valuable survey of the parallels between biological and cultural evolution, but they ignore or underestimate several other parallels that go some way to explaining the intensity of the distaste with which many researchers in the humanities and social sciences view any attempt to introduce Darwinian thinking into their domains. When Darwin first proposed sexual selection as a significant factor in biological evolution, it was greeted with both dismay and delight: To some it was an omin...
Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the "cultural fitness" of a mental representation can be inferred from its successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture.
American Antiquity, 2003
The chapters in this volume express the current diversity and richness of contemporary cultural evolutionary approaches. Although most of the chapters represent specific case studies, each of the authors structures his or her analysis with broader comparative issues in central focus. Collectively, these papers express the richness of the issues that are under investigation by comparative theorists interested in long-term change as well as the present diversity of data, approaches, and ideas that are being studied and employed to examine these questions.
Evolution, 2004
The claim that human culture evolves through the differential adoption of cultural variants, in a manner analogous to the evolution of biological species, has been greeted with much resistance and confusion. Here we demonstrate that as compelling a case can now be made that cultural evolution has key Darwinian properties, as Darwin himself presented for biological evolution in The Origin of Species. Culture is shown to exhibit variation, competition, inheritance, and the accumulation of successive cultural modifications over time. Adaptation, convergence, and the loss or change of function can also be identified in culture. Just as Darwin knew nothing of genes or particulate inheritance, a case for Darwinian cultural evolution can be made irrespective of whether unitary cultural replicators exist or whether cultural transmission mechanisms are well understood.
The relation of evolution and culture has been much debated. There have been many different approaches, of which the most notable have been those of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, Lumsden and Wilson, and Boyd and Richerson. Also noteworthy are the views of Durham and Hinde and most recently of the evolutionary psychologists. If these other accounts, or any one of them, seems to cover the subject adequately and to be intellectually satisfying, no new approach would be needed. The first step then is to summarize and assess the theories that have been presented.
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2003
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Evolutionary Biology-new York, 2015
Darwinian models of cultural change have been motivated, in part, by the desire to provide a framework for the unification of the biological and the human sciences. In this paper, drawing upon a distinction between the evolution of enabling mechanisms for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge (EEM) and the evolution of epistemic theses as cultural products (EET), we propose a model of how culture emerges as a product of biological evolution on the basis of the concept of reaction norms. The goal of this model is to provide a means for conceptualizing how the biological and the cultural realms are connected, when they start to disconnect, and what the key transitions are. We then assess the viability of a Darwinian approach to cultural change. We conclude that the prospects of producing a Darwinian model of cultural change that unifies the human sciences in a way that mirrors the unification of the biological sciences in the light of Darwin's theory are rather dim. Keywords Cultural evolution Á Darwin Á Epistemic theses Á Reaction norms ''Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'' (Dobzhansky 1973). ''The processes whereby self-reproduction is accomplished are the essence of heredity. The basic discovery of genetics is that the units of self-replication are molecular-level systems called genes'' (Dobzhansky 1970). ''In the most general terms, a culture consists of the self-reproducing or reproducible products of the mental activities of a group of human individuals living in a society'' (Huxley 1955).
This document collects three previously published essay reviews that discuss five books: Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (2005). James L. Pearson, Shamanism and the Ancient Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Archaeology (2002). David Sloan Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002). Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (2005). Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, eds. The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (2005). Taken together they cover music, drawing and painting (on rock), and literature and cover periods from human pre-history, through the emergence of modern man, to contemporary culture and society.sha
The ad hoc steering committee for the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution met in College Park, Maryland on December 20th through 22nd of 2015. This report is a summary of discussion topics and key decisions made in that highly productive meeting. We explored a number of issues sufficiently well to begin creating a road map for birthing the Society throughout 2016—culminating with the first annual conference, to be held in 2017, with an inaugural leadership team who will officially take office at that time.
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