Gene-culture Coevolution Theory Research Articles

Culture–gene co-evolution: Darwin’s other theory comes into view

Abstract The concept of ‘natural selection’, as proposed in The Origin of Species (published in 1859), refers to the better known of Charles Darwin’s two distinct theories of evolution. Darwin’s other theory was originally associated with his predecessor, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck. (Darwin used the shorthand phrase, the ‘use and disuse of parts’, to characterize this alternative theory.) Lamarck’s theory was rejected (and even mocked) by many 20th century theorists, who instead adopted a gene-centred, one-way, bottom-up model of evolutionary change, called the modern synthesis. (It has also been termed neo-Darwinism.) Darwin was more receptive to Lamarck’s approach, and in his second great work, The Descent of Man (published in 1874), he applied this Lamarckian theory particularly to human evolution. He ascribed our remarkable evolutionary success to our behaviour: social cooperation, innovation (and tools), morality and cumulative culture. Neo-Darwinists called it Darwin’s biggest mistake. However, an ever-increasing body of evidence, inclusive of cultural phenomena in many other species, suggests that it was, in fact, their mistake. Often called gene–culture co-evolution theory, the reverse order (as used here) might be a better way of characterizing the underlying causal dynamics. The ‘purposeful’ behaviour (teleonomy) of living systems has exerted a major influence on the trajectory of biological evolution.

Exceptions to the rule? Ethnographic alternatives to cumulative cultural evolution

In suggesting that the rules that govern the evolution of cumulative culture are observed in all modern societies, gene-culture coevolution theory implies that the biases that affect the successful ‘ratcheting’ and efficient transmission of innovations are cross-cultural universals. In the modeling of the theory the stress is placed on demographic strength, the absence of which would render small and isolated populations vulnerable to the ‘treadmill effect’, the inevitable consequence of impaired social learning. However, the ethnographic literature documents small groups of isolated hunters and gatherers who have devised intricate risk-reduction networks that do not necessarily proliferate technological innovations and function only in low demographic settings. Moreover, with merit and abilities being equally distributed, the model-based and conformist biases that influence social learning in gene-culture coevolution theory become irrelevant and elaborate ‘leveling mechanisms’ inhibit the acquisition of status and prestige. As a result, no cultural models can rise to prominence and sway the trajectory of cultural change. Contrary to the predictions of the theory, these societies do not seem to be plagued by cultural loss and, instead of hopelessly running the treadmill and living in poverty, they have developed egalitarian and, to an extent, ‘affluent’ societies. The model forwarded in this paper resolves this apparent paradox by enrolling the hypothesis of ‘cultural neoteny’. It is contended that egalitarian societies – despite their simple (immediate-return) mode of subsistence – are not the vestiges of an ancestral/universal stage from which more complex (delayed-return) economies would linearly evolve, but a relatively recent and idiosyncratic achievement through ‘subtractive cultural evolution’.
 Keywords: anarchic theory in ethnography, cultural heterochrony, cumulative/subtractive cultural evolution, immediate-return/egalitarian societies, ratcheting/leveling mechanisms.

Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study

Although the theory of memetics appeared highly promising at the beginning, it is no longer considered a scientific theory among contemporary evolutionary scholars. This study aims to compare the genealogy of memetics with the historically more successful gene-culture coevolution theory. This comparison is made in order to determine the constraints that emerged during the internal development of the memetics theory that could bias memeticists to work on the ontology of meme units as opposed to hypotheses testing, which was adopted by the gene-culture scholars. I trace this problem back to the diachronic development of memetics to its origin in the gene-centered anti-group-selectionist argument of George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins. The strict adoption of this argument predisposed memeticists with the a priori idea that there is no evolution without discrete units of selection, which in turn, made them dependent on the principal separation of biological and memetic fitness. This separation thus prevented memeticists from accepting an adaptationist view of culture which, on the contrary, allowed gene-culture theorists to attract more scientists to test the hypotheses, creating the historical success of the gene-culture coevolution theory.

The Roots of Human Creativity: Fire-Talks and “Hammocking” in the Runaway Species

Abstract Humans are neophile, curious, and explorative animals with impressive capabilities for creative problem-solving. I discuss some of the ultimate roots behind human creativity while reviewing two books on creativity and problem-solving. To E. O. Wilson, the driv­ing force behind creativity is our instinctive love of novelty, and creativity’s ultimate goal is “self-understanding.” I elaborate on and question this assumption. The theories of inclu­sive fitness and group selection are discussed, with Wilson in favor of the latter. Finally, the theory of gene-culture coevolution is introduced as fundamental to the unity of science and the humanities and to closing the gap between these two cultures. Eagleman and Brandt’s volume is more of an entertaining history of design and human inventiveness than a study in creativity as such. We hear about the three main operations of creative process: bending, blending, and breaking, and these operations are the primary means by which all ideas evolve, according to the authors.

문화교류와 한국어의 진화 - 근대 이전의 한국어 교류를 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study is rousing a recent attention to the changes of languages of Korea and near Korean peninsula, as well as reviewing the historical or traditional flow of Korean language teaching. Additionally, this study also discussed about the alternative methodological possibilities of analysing the origin of languages based on gene-culture coevolution theory adapting language phylogeny, not by internal reconstruction of traditional language research. Looking backward over past times before modern era, teaching and learning Korean language as a ‘foreign’ language were slowly changed from ‘oral(spoken)-focused/borderland-based/hereditary succession/natural acquisition’ circumstances into ‘document(written)-focused/government-based/professional training/organized learning’ system.

Shamanism and the social nature of cumulative culture.

Our species-unique capacity for cumulative culture relies on a complex interplay between social and cognitive motivations. Attempting to understand much of human behaviour will be incomplete if one of these motivations is the focus at the expense of the other. Anchored in gene-culture co-evolution theory, we stake a claim for the importance of social drivers in determining why shamans exist.

Cooperation in adversity: an evolutionary approach

Throughout the organic world cooperation provides mutual benefit but is vulnerable to exploitation from free-riders. Over the last 30 years work in evolutionary biology and game theory has provided understanding of the conditions necessary for the maintenance of cooperation, and advances in gene-culture coevolution theory have extended this understanding to our own species. After a preamble on the evolutionary analysis of behaviour I outline this work. I then consider how cooperation is influenced by environmental adversity and find that in non-human species it is enhanced under these circumstances in a range of taxa. In a sample of human cases the same result is found in a majority, but the opposite effect in some when socioeconomic position is the measure of quality. In anthropological studies of societies living in extremis, again the opposite effect is found. I propose a sigmoid shape for the relationship between adversity and fitness (or human well-being) and a consequent inverted-U shaped relationship between adversity and the benefit of cooperation. Most of the data presented on the relationship between adversity and cooperation are consistent with this proposal. I suggest further tests of the proposal and place the study of cooperation in the broader context of prosociality.

Recent Critiques of Dual Inheritance Theory

Abstract The dual inheritance or gene–culture coevolution theory of human evolution was developed in the 1970s and 80s. Early work built mathematical theories derived from then-current work in human development, sociolinguistics, and the diffusion of innovations. More recently it has included a considerable amount of new empirical work. The theory has always had critics in evolutionary biology and the social and behavioral sciences. Morin's book critiques the theory from an alternate epidemiological or attraction theory of cultural evolution that doubts that imitation and adaptation play significant roles in cultural evolution. Lewens's book is a wide-ranging analysis of critiques of gene–culture coevolution theory that finds most of them in error or at least not fatal to the project. His book includes a chapter on critiques based on considerations of human nature, of which Morin's book is one variant, and which Lewens argues are faulty. That is also my conclusion.

Cultural Evolution and Social Epistemology: A Darwinian Alternative to Steve Fuller’s Theodicy of Science

Key to Steve Fuller’s recent defense of intelligent design is the claim that it alone can explain why science is even possible. By contrast, Fuller argues that Darwinian evolutionary theory posits a purposeless universe leaving humans with no motivation to study science and no basis for modifying an underlying reality. I argue that this view represents a retreat from insights about knowledge within Fuller’s own program of social epistemology. I argue for a Darwinian picture of science as a product of cultural evolution building upon biological capabilities and liabilities bequeathed to us by biological evolution. Dual Inheritance or Gene-Culture Coevolution Theory can help us understand how complex social institutions emerged out of distinct, if connected, processes of biological and cultural evolution. Only by understanding how the unnatural nature of modern science emerged through cultural evolution can we consider where modern science functions well or poorly.

Evoked Culture and Evoked Nature: The Promise of Gene-Culture Co-Evolution Theory for Sociology

The traditional sociological view of culture has been almost exclusively that of transmitted culture decoupled from biology. The concept of evoked culture brings biology “back in” since it identifies ecological challenges that evoked certain practices based on evolutionary imperatives. The practices are then passed on to subsequent generations as normative, and individuals best suited to these normative practices will enjoy greater fitness benefits than those less suited. In other words, practices will be transmitted genetically as well as culturally. This paper provides several examples of how evoked and transmitted culture are tightly bound (nature evoked by culture, and culture evoked by nature) as well as identifying two specific genetic polymorphisms associated with adaptive approach-avoidance behaviors and found in highly variable frequencies in different cultures around the world. We argue that an appreciation of evoked culture complements transmitted culture and deepens and broadens our understanding of cultural life and practices.

Thorstein Veblen's Darwinian framework and gene-culture coevolution theory

At the turn of the previous century, Thorstein Veblen used Darwinian evolutionary principles to explain the macro-historical evolution of human societies, as well as the institutional structure of the modern pecuniary culture. Even if Veblen had a strong intuitive grasp of the evolutionary forces operating in society, he was not always clear and explicit in developing his ideas towards a full-fledged, consistent evolutionary social theory. This paper argues that a relatively recent theoretical approach, gene-culture coevolution theory, has the conceptual apparatus to remedy this problem and thus make Veblen's ideas an important part of contemporary evolutionary thinking in social theory.

Biocultural Theory and the Study of Literature

This essay argues that the sciences most relevant to literary study form an integrated complex summarized by the term “biocultural theory.” Foundational theories accepted currently in literary scholarship are incompatible with a biocultural understanding of the evolved character of the human mind. Psychological and social theories that form part of the amalgam designated “poststructuralism” identify important areas of human concern but can now be replaced with empirically grounded concepts that are more complete, more correct, more nuanced. The most important elements in biocultural theory are the theory of human life history and gene-culture coevolution. Biocultural theorists argue that basic human motives are channeled into cultural norms that are articulated in imaginative form through myths, legends, rituals, images, songs, and stories. Biocultural theory offers an opportunity to develop literary research in company with our developing scientific understanding of human motives, emotions, identity, social interactions, and forms of cognition.

Niche Construction and the Study of Culture Change in Anthropology: Challenges and Prospects

<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| Many North American anthropologists remain deeply suspicious of attempts to theorize the evolution of culture, given the legacy in our discipline of nineteenth-century stagist theories of cultural evolution that were shaped by scientific racism<span class="s2"><strong>. </strong></span>In the late twentieth-century, some theorists tried to escape this legacy by using formal models drawn from neo-Darwinian population biology to reconceptualize cultural evolutionary processes, but these more recent approaches have been found unsatisfactory for reasons of their own. For example, gene-culture coevolution and the dual inheritance theory have limited appeal to many contemporary cultural anthropologists because these theories rely on definitions of culture, and assumptions about human individuals and social groups, that many cultural anthropologists no longer find persuasive<span class="s2"><strong>.</strong></span>Niche construction, by contrast, appears more promising as a framework for connecting cultural change with biological and ecological change. Nevertheless, the innovative features of niche construction coexist uneasily alongside the same problematic features that limit the usefulness of gene-culture coevolution and dual inheritance theory in cultural anthropology<span class="s2"><strong>. </strong></span>This article discusses anthropological concerns about niche construction theory, but also suggests ways in which some of them might be reduced if niche construction theory were to incorporate insights from developmental systems theory and actor network theory.</p>

L.L. Cavalli-Sforza: A bird in a gilded cage

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza is a complex figure. On the one hand, he has publicly backed those who assert that human races do not exist. On the other hand, by aggregating large volumes of genetic data, he has proven the existence of large continental races, as well as smaller regional and micro ones. By developing the theory of gene-culture co-evolution, he has also shown that humans did not stop evolving genetically when they began to evolve culturally. In fact, the two processes have fed into each other, with humans having to adapt not only to the natural portion of their environment (climate, vegetation, wildlife, etc.) but also to the portion they themselves have created (mode of subsistence, behavioral norms, gender roles, class structure, belief system, etc.). This has led some to see a double game at work. While bowing to the mainstream taboos, Cavalli-Sforza has quietly amassed evidence that human races not only exist but also differ in ways that are more than skin deep. In time, his weighty tomes will speak louder than his official statements on race. This may indeed be how he sees himself, and it might explain certain contradictions between his public persona and his academic self. Oh, those naïve antiracists, if only they knew how they’re being outfoxed! Time will tell who is outfoxing whom. To date, the results speak for themselves. When in 1994 Cavalli-Sforza published The History and Geography of Human Genes, academics and nonacademics alike were talking more openly about race, as seen by the publication the same year of The Bell Curve and by the willingness of previously silent anthropologists, like Vincent Sarich, to step forward and speak out. That interval of glasnost soon ended, in no small part because of Cavalli-Sforza’s apparent conversion, as attested in his book, to the view that human races do not exist in any meaningful sense. Why did he convert? And did he really? I doubt there was any conversion. His change of heart was too rapid, and it happened while the zeitgeist was moving in the other direction. Perhaps he saw a chance to gain acceptance for his new tome. Or perhaps he received a letter one day, detailing his wartime record, the people he worked with, and the testing on human subjects … Cavalli-Sforza had to remake his life when the war ended. He never denied the nature of his wartime research (the time it takes for anthrax to kill its host) but tried to create the impression that he was doing pure research with no military implications. Yet this was Berlin, in 1943-1944. There was no money for pure research. Was he motivated by opportunism, the chance to gain experience in his field of study? Or did he feel loyalty to the Axis cause? It is difficult to say, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. It is enough to say that he later saw his wartime research as a stain on his record and tried to minimize it as much as possible. He was thus vulnerable to blackmail, or rather to his chronic fear of blackmail. We will probably never know the full story. One thing is sure. If Cavalli-Sforza is playing a double game, he has been playing it far too long. Such a strategy is excusable for an academic who is young, untenured, poorly known, and far from retirement, but these excuses hardly apply to a professor emeritus like Cavalli-Sforza. The time is overdue to speak frankly and, if need be, pay the price. Anyway, what else can he do now with his vast reserves of public esteem? Take it with him to the next world?

Evolution ‘on purpose’: how behaviour has shaped the evolutionary process

The idea that behaviour has played an important role in evolution has had its ups and downs over the past two centuries. Now it appears to be up once again. Lamarck can claim priority for this insight, along with Darwin's more guarded view. However, there followed a long ‘dark-age’, which began with Weismann's mutation theory and spanned the gene-centred era that followed during most of the 20th Century, although it was punctuated by various contrarians, from Baldwin's ‘Organic Selection theory’ to Simpson's ‘Baldwin effect’, Mayr's ‘Pacemaker’ model, and Waddington's ‘genetic assimilation’, amongst others. Nowadays, even as we are reading genomes and using this information to illuminate biological causation and decipher evolutionary patterns, behavioural processes are more fully appreciated, with ‘multilevel selection theory’ providing a more ecumenical, multicausal model of evolutionary change. This has been accompanied by a flood of research on how behavioural influences contribute to the ongoing evolutionary process, from research on phenotypic plasticity to niche construction theory and gene–culture co-evolution theory. However, the theoretical implications of this paradigm shift still have not been fully integrated into our current thinking about evolution. Behaviour has a purpose (teleonomy); it is ends-directed. Living organisms are not passive objects of ‘chance and necessity’ (as Jacques Monod put it). Nor is the currently popular concept of phenotypic plasticity sufficient. Organisms are active participants in the evolutionary process (cybernetic systems) and have played a major causal role in determining its direction. It could be called ‘constrained purposiveness’, and one of the important themes in evolution, culminating in humankind, has been the ‘progressive’ evolution of self-determination (intelligence) and its ever-expanding potency. I call this agency ‘Teleonomic Selection’. In a very real sense, our species invented itself. For better and worse, the course of evolution is increasingly being shaped by the ‘Sorcerer's Apprentice’. Monod's mantra needs to be updated. Evolution is a process that combines ‘chance, necessity, teleonomy and selection’. © 2013 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 112, 242–260.

Una teoría darwinista de la coevolución gen-cultura

Darwin believed that his theory of evolution would stand or fall on its ability to account for human behavior. The ideas in the Descent of Man were widely discussed by his contemporaries although they were far from the only evolutionary theories current in the late 19th Century. Darwin’s specific evolutionary ideas and those of his main followers had very little impact on the social sciences as they emerged as separate disciplines in the early 20th Century. The social and biological sciences continued to diverge until the late part of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, Donald T. Campbell, an American social psychologist, published some of the first theoretical work that adapted principles of evolutionary theory to the problem of the evolution of cultures. Since the pioneering work of Campbell several research programmes on evolutionary approaches to human culture have been developed. Here we sketch our own theory of gene-culture coevolution. Despite his prestige, Darwin convinced only a few of his contemporaries that he had the correct theory of the origin of the human mind. His strongest influence was on the pioneering psychologists, Romanes, Morgan, James, and Baldwin, but their importance in psychology waned drastically after the turn of the 20th Century (Richards, 1987). No 20th Century social science derives any significant influence from the Descent of Man, and to this day, eminent social scientists are quite hostile to Darwinism. How can it be that a theory can generate so much controversy, and yet not attract enough critical work to test its worth for over a century? Can we flesh out a satisfactory theory of the evolution of human behavior along Darwinian lines, or is the enterprise really fatally flawed?

Evolution Is Not Egalitarian

Previous articleNext article No AccessComment: Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and Inequality in Premodern SocietiesEvolution Is Not EgalitarianMark V. Flinn Mark V. FlinnDepartment of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, U.S.A. ([email protected]). 21 X 09 Search for more articles by this author Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, U.S.A. ([email protected]). 21 X 09PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 1February 2010 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/649565 Views: 70Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by The Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Gennady Shkliarevsky In Quest for Justice: Solving the Problem of Inclusion and Equality, SSRN Electronic Journal 551 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3862630Nikolay N. Kradin Heterarchy and Hierarchy in Eurasian Steppes, (Sep 2020): 185–204.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51437-2_8Anthony Walsh, Ilhong Yun Evoked Culture and Evoked Nature: The Promise of Gene-Culture Co-Evolution Theory for Sociology, Frontiers in Sociology 1 (Jul 2016).https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2016.00008

Canoes and cultural evolution

Over the last 30 years, the idea that the processes producing cultural stability and change are analogous in important respects to those of biological evolution has become increasingly popular. Biological evolution is characterized by changing frequencies of genes in populations through time as a result of such processes as natural selection; likewise, cultural evolution refers to the changing distributions of cultural attributes in populations, which are affected by processes such as natural selection but also by others that have no analogue in genetic evolution. The fundamental, mathematically based theory that justified and spelled out the necessary modifications to standard population genetics theory to make it relevant to culture was laid out by Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (1) and Boyd and Richerson (2) in the 1980s, on the basis of earlier papers, and Richard Dawkins (3) had already introduced the idea to the popular imagination with his concept of the “meme” as analogous to the gene. In the intervening period, the development of what has come to be called “dual inheritance theory” or “gene–culture coevolution theory” has continued, and it has been accompanied by a slowly growing number of empirical case studies that apply these ideas to understanding patterned variation in cultural data. The article by Rogers and Ehrlich (4) in this issue of PNAS makes a significant contribution to this growing field by showing how different cultural evolutionary processes can be identified and distinguished from one another and how they differentially affect different kinds of cultural traits; it will certainly become a widely cited classic case study, and the dataset of descriptive traits of canoes from different Polynesian groups is likely to become a test bed for future cultural evolutionary studies.

What Cultural Primatology Can Tell Anthropologists about the Evolution of Culture

This review traces the development of the field of cultural primatology from its origins in Japan in the 1950s to the present. The field has experienced a number of theoretical and methodological influences from diverse fields, including comparative experimental psychology, Freudian psychoanalysis, behavioral ecology, cultural anthropology, and gene-culture coevolution theory. Our understanding of cultural dynamics and the evolution of culture cannot be complete without comparative studies of (a) how socioecological variables affect cultural transmission dynamics, (b) the proximate mechanisms by which social learning is achieved, (c) developmental studies of the role of social influence in acquiring behavioral traits, and (d) the fitness consequences of engaging in social learning.

Memetics and money

Lea & Webley's (L&W's) Drug Theory solves many puzzles surrounding money-related behavior. I explore supplementing the Drug Theory with ideas from gene-culture coevolution theory and memetic theory.