Evolution and Culture. Stephen C. Levinson and Pierre Jaisson (Eds.). (2006, MIT Press.) $75 (cloth), $35 (paper), xvii + 296 pages

Abstract

Evolution and Culture. Stephen C. Levinson and Pierre Jaisson (Eds.). (2006, MIT Press.) $75 (cloth), $35 (paper), xvii + 296 pages. This book contains a collection of 13 articles and one rather philosophical preface that were written as the result of the symposium ‘‘Evolution and Culture,’’ organized by the Fyssen Foundation in 1999. The Fyssen foundation is a privately funded French charity that has as its goal the promotion of research into cognitive mechanisms underlying behavior. The evolution of culture is still a hot topic in the study of cognition, as it was then, and this book contains contributions from a number of wellknown researchers in the field. Although the book does not contain any articles on computer models, it is nevertheless relevant for researchers working in artificial life, because it contains a lot of ideas, data, and references, and because many of the topics that are addressed lend themselves to computer modeling. Some of the book’s content is speculative and does not necessarily reflect the consensus in the field, however, and it should therefore also be approached with the necessary caution by readers who are new to the field. The book contains articles that all address some aspect of the evolution of culture, written from the different perspectives of the authors. It consists of two parts, ‘‘Emergence of Culture in Evolution’’ and ‘‘Brain, Cognition and Evolution,’’ each consisting of six chapters. The book also has a preface and an introduction, written by Pierre Jaisson and Stephen Levinson (the editors), respectively, that each count as scientific articles in their own right. Although the book is divided into two parts, the thematic difference between them is not great. The articles in the first part address the question of the evolution of culture from a more historical point of view, while those in the second part perhaps choose a more neurological or behavioral point of view. The preface and the introduction are both more general chapters spending some effort on explaining why the evolution of culture is worthy of investigation. Jaisson then goes on to argue for the importance of family structure as a precursor of society and culture. Levinson presents a number of factors—such as the ability to read others’ intentions, cultural variation, cultural conservatism, and group selection—that lead to a culture in which knowledge gets accumulated, so that the culture can become increasingly complex. He illustrates this with examples from the Rossel Island culture, a Melanesian culture he has studied. The next six contributions, forming the ‘‘Emergence of Culture in Evolution’’ part, are by Claude Combes, Robert Foley, Christopher Boehm, Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, Daniel Dennett, and Dan Sperber. These contributions range from relatively straightforward presentations of data (e.g., the chapter by Foley) to speculative and philosophical (e.g., the chapters by Combes and Dennett). Combes’ chapter is about the importance of symbiosis in what he calls ‘‘quantum leaps in evolution.’’ The implication is that culture is such a quantum leap caused by symbiosis, but this is not elaborated. Dennett discusses whether cultural change can be considered evolution, if in fact the cultural changes (mutations) are not purely arbitrary, but filtered by the interpretation of the people making up the culture. He argues that this is the same as biological evolution, just on a different level. Dennett refers to Sperber, who has published different views on this matter. Sperber’s contribution to the book is on other matters, however. He makes a proposal, based on what he calls ‘‘cultural cognitive causal chains,’’ of a mechanism that would provide the social sciences with a basis that is more comparable to that of