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DOES CUMULATIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION HAVE DARWINIAN PROPERTIES? THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

100%
Krekó K.
Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle (Hungarian Psychological Review)
|
2010
|
vol. 65
|
issue 1
103-116
EN
Human culture is uniquely characterized by the accumulation of knowledge and products that could not be reinvented by each succeeding generation. This process, namely cumulative cultural evolution leads to the emergence of complex adaptations (RICHERSON, BOYD, 2005; TOMASELLO, 1999). The aim of this study is to outline the conditions necessary for human cultural evolution. Memeticists of Dawkins described this phenomenon in terms of biological evolution, but they fell short of explanations when facing serious critiques. Knowledge contents carried by minds and artifacts are not self replicating discrete entities. Not replicators, but rather cognitive interpretive and inferential mechanisms, like schemas and modules stabilize cultural content, making Darwinian theory applicable as an explanatory framework (SPERBER, HIRSCHFELD, 2006; BOYD, RICHERSON, 2005). Population dynamic models applied to cultural evolution lead to the conclusion that in order to increase the fitness of the population, imitation has to increase the fitness of individual learners (ROGERS, 1989). If individuals can effectively choose between imitation and individual learning, making cost and effort estimations their overall fitness increases. Adaptive pressure was on cognitive mechanisms supporting imitative learning. Such mechanisms are theory of mind (RICHERSON, BOYD, 2005), intersubjectivity (TOMASELLO, KRUGER, RATNER, 1993), and human pedagogy (GERGELY, CSIBRA, 2005). A growing body of results by mathematical models, field studies, and laboratory experiments – such as transmission chains, replacement method, and closed group – contribute to our understanding of the emergence and guiding principles of human cultural phenomena.
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