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Behavioral and Brain Sciences Behavioral and Brain Sciences

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Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2006

Alex Mesoudi ,
Andrew Whiten  and
Kevin N. Laland
Alex Mesoudi
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, Scotland, United Kingdom Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri – Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, Canada W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada. MesoudiA@missouri.eduhttp://www.missouri.edu/~mesoudia/">www.missouri.edu/~mesoudia/
Andrew Whiten
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, Scotland, United Kingdom. aw2@st-and.ac.ukwww.st-and.ac.uk/~aw2/
Kevin N. Laland
Affiliation:
Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9TS, Scotland, United Kingdom. knl1@st-and.ac.ukwww.st-andrews.ac.uk/~seal
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Abstract

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in “social cognitive neuroscience,” although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

Keywords

cultural anthropology cultural evolution cultural transmission culture evolution evolutionary archaeology evolutionary biology gene-culture coevolution memes social learning.
Type
Main Articles
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 2006 , pp. 329 - 347
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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