Biological and cultural evolution: Different manifestations of the same principle. A systems-theoretical approach

Abstract

Sociobiology started as the study of the biological evolution of social behavior. Human behavior, however, is the result of the interaction of both biological and cultural factors. Therefore, a theory of human sociobiology should be focused on the interaction of biological and cultural evolution. The recent development of gene-culture coevolutionary theory is a first step into that direction though it is still far from being applicable to concrete situations. One of the main reasons for this is that so far a comprehensive theory of cultural evolution is lacking, thereby leaving unclear the precise nature of the influence of genetic change on cultural change, and vice versa. To be sure, attempts have been made to explain cultural evolution by simply transferring the mechanisms of biological evolution to a cultural setting. This approach, however, is not satisfactory, mainly because the principles that allow the conservation and transfer of information in cultural evolution are quite different from those in biological evolution. In fact, if both types of evolution are different expressions of the same principle, as the names suggest, it should be possible to formulate a more basic definition of evolution. This definition, then, could be used as the starting point for the construction of a theory of cultural evolution. Using concepts from general systems theory, this paper attempts to provide such a basis by formulating a generalized definition of evolution, which applies both to biological and cultural evolution.