Saving culture from selection: Comment on “An evolutionary framework for cultural change: Selectionism versus communal exchange” by L. Gabora

Abstract

Most researchers working on evolutionary approaches to culture do so within the Darwinian paradigm, and accept the role of selection in shaping variation. Liane Gabora is an exception, and has been steadfast in articulating the need for an evolutionary but “non-Darwinian” theory of cultural change. In [1] she argues that culture does not meet the definitional requirements to evolve by natural selection, and introduces an alternative process called “communal exchange.” We find her argument that culture cannot be subject to selection deeply flawed. Indeed, it seems to us that Gabora’s primary mission is to “save culture” from being subject to natural selection, by analyzing selection in three ways that allow culture to be excluded from its domain. First, Gabora’s argument is based upon a non-standard account of selection. Few if any geneticists or biologists would recognize genetic inheritance as powered by “self-replicating automata” of the von Neumann type. A “gene” (an incredibly complex concept in its own right [2]) certainly does not code both for the machinery to interpret itself, and for the protein its sequence represents. SRA’s or replicators are not needed for selection [3]. Indeed, while the “replicator” concept was useful in illuminating the “units of selection” problem, employing it as an empirical unit is problematic [3–7]. Second, Gabora adds unnecessary conditions to the requirements for selection [8]. For example, the sequestration of inherited information, as in the isolation of germ-line cells in many animal lineages, is a derived characteristic which evolved quite late in the history of life [9]. Natural selection proceeds handily in many taxa which do not sequester heritable information. Nor is it required that new variation be approximated by a random process [10]. Third, Gabora criticizes the transfer of biological concepts to culture, by confusing theoretical concepts and empirical instances. For example, she claims that “generations” are not applicable to culture. In reality, organismal