Alex Mesoudi, Kevin N. Laland, Robert Boyd, Briggs Buchanan, Emma Flynn, Robert N. McCauley, Jürgen Renn, Victoria Reyes-García, Stephen Shennan, Dietrich Stout, and Claudio Tennie
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262019750
- eISBN:
- 9780262318297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262019750.003.0011
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This chapter explores how the principles and methods of cultural evolution can inform our understanding of technology and science. Both technology and science are prime examples of cumulative ...
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This chapter explores how the principles and methods of cultural evolution can inform our understanding of technology and science. Both technology and science are prime examples of cumulative cultural evolution, with each generation preserving and building upon the achievements of prior generations. A key benefit of an evolutionary approach to technological or scientific change is “population thinking,” where broad trends and patterns are explained in terms of individual-level mechanisms of variation, selection, and transmission. This chapter outlines some of these mechanisms and their implications for technological change, including sources of innovation, types of social learning, facilitatory developmental factors, and cultural transmission mechanisms. The role of external representations and human-constructed environments in technological evolution are explored, and factors are examined which determine the varying rates of technological change over time: from intrinsic characteristics of single technological traits, such as efficacy or manufacturing cost, to larger social and population-level factors, such as population size or social institutions. Science can be viewed as both a product of cultural evolution as well as a form of cultural evolution in its own right. Science and technology constitute separate yet interacting evolutionary processes. Outstanding issues and promising avenues for future investigation are highlighted and potential applications of this work are noted. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.Less
This chapter explores how the principles and methods of cultural evolution can inform our understanding of technology and science. Both technology and science are prime examples of cumulative cultural evolution, with each generation preserving and building upon the achievements of prior generations. A key benefit of an evolutionary approach to technological or scientific change is “population thinking,” where broad trends and patterns are explained in terms of individual-level mechanisms of variation, selection, and transmission. This chapter outlines some of these mechanisms and their implications for technological change, including sources of innovation, types of social learning, facilitatory developmental factors, and cultural transmission mechanisms. The role of external representations and human-constructed environments in technological evolution are explored, and factors are examined which determine the varying rates of technological change over time: from intrinsic characteristics of single technological traits, such as efficacy or manufacturing cost, to larger social and population-level factors, such as population size or social institutions. Science can be viewed as both a product of cultural evolution as well as a form of cultural evolution in its own right. Science and technology constitute separate yet interacting evolutionary processes. Outstanding issues and promising avenues for future investigation are highlighted and potential applications of this work are noted. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.
Kim Sterelny
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262016797
- eISBN:
- 9780262302814
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262016797.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This book develops a novel account of the speed and extent of human evolutionary divergence from the great ape stock. It does not explain human uniqueness by positing a critical adaptive breakthrough ...
More
This book develops a novel account of the speed and extent of human evolutionary divergence from the great ape stock. It does not explain human uniqueness by positing a critical adaptive breakthrough (episodic memory; advanced theory of mind; planning and causal reasoning; language). Rather, it identifies a series of positive feedback loops between initially minor advances in social tolerance, ecological flexibility, cooperative foraging, social learning, and links the results of these feedback loops to the archaeological and anthropological record. The analysis is organised round a new model of the evolution of social learning — the evolved apprentice model — and its coevolutionary interaction with cooperation in foraging and reproduction. Social learning expands through the increasing organisation and enrichment of juvenile learning environments, not just through changes in the intrinsic architecture of human minds. Initially, and for millions of years, these organised social learning environments made it possible for humans to reliably transmit a few core skills, but without supporting the reliable and intergenerationally stable transmission of incremental improvements to those skills. Ultimately, though, enriched and somewhat larger social environments made cumulative cultural evolution possible. Cumulative cultural evolution — Tomasello`s Ratchet — depended on some adaptations for social learning, richly structured learning environments, and demographic critical mass. Critical mass matters, for small and scattered groups can easily lose complex skills through unlucky accident. Humans are so different from great apes in part because they have constructed such novel developmental and selective niches.Less
This book develops a novel account of the speed and extent of human evolutionary divergence from the great ape stock. It does not explain human uniqueness by positing a critical adaptive breakthrough (episodic memory; advanced theory of mind; planning and causal reasoning; language). Rather, it identifies a series of positive feedback loops between initially minor advances in social tolerance, ecological flexibility, cooperative foraging, social learning, and links the results of these feedback loops to the archaeological and anthropological record. The analysis is organised round a new model of the evolution of social learning — the evolved apprentice model — and its coevolutionary interaction with cooperation in foraging and reproduction. Social learning expands through the increasing organisation and enrichment of juvenile learning environments, not just through changes in the intrinsic architecture of human minds. Initially, and for millions of years, these organised social learning environments made it possible for humans to reliably transmit a few core skills, but without supporting the reliable and intergenerationally stable transmission of incremental improvements to those skills. Ultimately, though, enriched and somewhat larger social environments made cumulative cultural evolution possible. Cumulative cultural evolution — Tomasello`s Ratchet — depended on some adaptations for social learning, richly structured learning environments, and demographic critical mass. Critical mass matters, for small and scattered groups can easily lose complex skills through unlucky accident. Humans are so different from great apes in part because they have constructed such novel developmental and selective niches.
