New pre-print out now: Review and discussion of differences between cultural and biological evolution that are underrepresented in existing literature. Providing avenues for the future of interdisciplinary cultural evolution thinking https://t.co/MkytfP9LdB via @OSFramework
- Marco Smolla (@smollamarco) August 27, 2020
We conclude the manuscript with a call to reach out to colleagues in other disciplines, pay more attention to questions that are outside of our own field, and to acknowledge and incorporate the existing works in other disciplines.
- Marco Smolla (@smollamarco) August 27, 2020
This fills me with despair for the future study of cultural evolution. Why? Because the article is so relentlessly centered on biology. And why not? Much of the best known work in the study of cultural evolution has been done by biologists, or by thinkers oriented toward biological concepts and methods. And what is wrong with that?
It won't work, not for language, music, art, poetry, ideas in all domains, and so forth. Why? Because the authors of the paper (implicitly) assume that the benefits cultural evolution must accrue to biological individuals as do the benefits of biological individuals. But cultural change often happens too rapidly for this to provide a mechanism. And they know this. But they are unwilling to draw the logical conclusion, that cultural evolution cannot be centered on biological individuals. It must be centered on cultural individuals. Cultural individuals? Don't ask, this is only a blog post, not a book-length exposition of a theoretical position. But see the entry for "cultural being" on this page: Cultural Evolution: Terms & Guide.
For example, there they acknowledge the rapid rate of cultural evolution (p. 9): "Cultural evolution can proceed much faster than biological evolution both in rate of change and in terms of trait complexity. This has been pointed out previously, and several reasons are generally given for why this is the case [...]." A bit later they note (p. 12):
In biological evolution, the fate of a trait can be understood by considering the average reproductive success of all carriers of that trait (Haig, 2012; Hamilton, 1963). It is common to use optimisation and game theoretic approaches to study evolutionary endpoints (i.e. adaptations). In contrast, in cultural evolution there is no generally accepted formulation of cultural fitness (Ramsey and De Block, 2017) as the relationship between the individual and its traits is more complicated. Here, transmission is not tied to biological reproduction, can occur between arbitrary individuals, and the individual is not fixed with respect to the cultural traits it possesses and exhibits to others during its life. [...] For instance, traits that are contagious enough can spread and be maintained in a population even if they reduce the survival and/or biological reproduction of individuals (Anderton et al., 1987; Boyd and Richerson, 1976; Campbell, 1975).
Yes, a well-known issue. So why adopt a theoretical framework that treats this as an annoying side issue rather than as one of the phenomena central to the theory? Why? Because, in a well-known formulation, if your tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. Their hammer is biology.
I could go on and on, but as I said, this is only a blog post, not a book. I take is as given that culture, taken as a whole, is a biological adaptation - though, of course, there is always a chance that, either by action (e.g. nuclear war) or inaction (e.g. global warming) humankind may destroy itself. What we need from a theory of cultural evolution is a set of conceptual tools that will help us better understand how culture works. The biology-centric conceptual orientation of this article, gene-cultural coevolution or dual-inheritance theory, is of limited value. It cannot be the basis of a robust account of cultural evolution. It is, in effect, a geocentric proposal (biology) about a heliocentric world (culture). The theory of cultural evolution needs its own Copernican revolution. Dawkins had the right idea when he proposed the meme as a cultural entity that is the object of cultural selection. But he didn't have any useful ideas about how to develop that insight, nor has anyone else flying under the banner of memes, including Dan Dennett.
Here's an exercise for the reader: Take this article and analyze it in terms of the four questions I pose in my
quick guide to cultural evolution (for the humanist):
- What is the target/beneficiary of the evolutionary dynamic?
- Replication (copying) or (re)construction
- Is there a meaningful distinction comparable to the biological distinction between phenotype and genotype?
- Are the genetic elements of culture inside people's heads or are they in the external environment?
You might want to start with this table (from page 6) in the second tweet above.
