Have We a Darwin of Biocultural Evolution?: Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process . Charles J. Lumsden, Edward O. Wilson.

Abstract

Genes, Mind, and Culture is the much heralded synthesis of biological and cultural evolution by Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson. It has been awaited by both proponents and opponents of sociobiology. Until now, sociobiological theory has suffered the schizophrenic division of: (1) a set of discrete mathematical models that establish that behavioral evolution could possibly proceed in a certain fashion; and, (2) a set of hyperteleological speculations about genes that plot, connive, and exercise free will in order to increase their kind. Genes, Mind, and Culture undertakes a broader theoretical approach. authors avoid teleological blind alleys quite successfully. How well they succeed in other ways will require some discussion. Lumsden and Wilson suffer no modesty in the breadth of their objectives for this book. They wish to trace behavioral development genes through the mind to culture. They elaborate a theory of gene-culture coevolution. Such ambitious goals suggest a difficult book, and on this the authors deliver. Genes, Mind, and Culture is not light reading. Lumsden and Wilson proceed from a consideration of cognitive processes in the brain (mind), to the frequency distribution of culture traits, and then to the joint evolution of genes and culture traits. two chapters on the mind, The Primary Epigenetic Rules and The Secondary Epigenetic Rules, deal with the significance of some cultural universals and with some of the findings of cognitive psychology in terms of perception and information coding and processing in the brain. phrase epigenetic rules is a result of the authors' tendency to coin new and gratuitous terms. An epigene is a gene that affects development, as most genes do. An epigenetic rule is a reification of the existence of cannalization in development. Culturgens are culture traits. Euculture is culture as we know it among humans. In the two chapters on the mind, Lumsden and Wilson come to the unexceptional conclusion that humans handle some sensory inputs and data categories better than other data categories; that we are biased to learn certain distinctions better than other distinctions. They go on to the less common conclusion that the genetic evolution of these cognitive biases (epigenetic rules) influence cultural evolution and does so rather rapidly. They next devote one chapter, Gene-Culture Translation, to the influence of