An interesting paper on cultural evolution 31 Dec 2009 PNAS has a very interesting paper about cultural evolution in Taiwan at the beginning of the 20th Century, by Melissa Brown and Marcus Feldman. It basically argues that two different selective forces, Cultural and Social, influenced the decline in footbinding – it became seen as a low status practice, which affected the cultural inheritance. Feldman is one of the founders of modern cultural evolution, in conjunction with Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. While I think that their view of cultural evolution is slightly confused (why should inheritance tracks be distinguished by social status and culture?) I appreciate the depth of the research and the fact that unlike the easy option of group selection, they have provided an individual (at the level of the agent) selectionist account. Now, if someone would just model drift in cultural evolution… Evolution Social dominance Social evolution
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One thinks drift could be modeled along the lines of the history of Christianity. Lots of drift followed by severe selection…
@afarensis Successful religions are not just about “drifting”. They are strengthening communities and families, lifting the average fertility rates of adherents (some even by acquiring celibate Helpers at the Nest benefitting survival and reproduction of the laity), thus linking cultural and biological evolution. Christianity managed to conquer whole Empires bottom-up. Whether we like it or not, religiosity seems to be potentially adaptive… 🙂
Granted, but there were, and continue to be, an incredible number of offshoots from the christian religion especially in the early days when the early church fathers spent a lot of time stamping out various sects whose doctrine had drifted from orthodixy or orthopraxy. Most don’t make it (Gnostics, Huegenots, Rev Jim Jones, to name three the first two of which experienced negative selection) a few (Lutheranism, Calvinism) make it and positive selection carries them towards fixation.
Most don’t make it (Gnostics, Huegenots, Rev Jim Jones, to name three the first two of which experienced negative selection) a few … As someone who lives and works in a town founded and built by Huguenot refugees and which still has a thriving Huguenot religious community I am forced to disagree with your statement.
@ afarensis Yes, I completely agree with your post. Every evolutionary process is relying on variation before selection can take place. Successful religions are spawning hundreds of variations, with only the demographically strong surviving the centuries. Most variations fail, some tragically – as is the norm in evolutionary processes (what you called “negative selection”). And when the successful variants are beginning to stagnate, new spawnings are taking place etc. pp. Just compare e.g. the fate of the all-celibate Shakers with that of the high-fertile Amish. While the Shakers are succumbing due to the lack of children, the numbers of Amish are growing exponentially, with new variations taking place among them. @ Thony C. Thank you for your post! And yes, Huguenot refugees played an important role in peopling and developping some regions not only of the US, but also of Germany – especially Prussia. The Prussian king was smart enough to understand that granting religious freedom would get him pro-active immigrants organized into strong communities and gratefull to their new country. As did America. 🙂
“Now, if someone would just model drift in cultural evolution…” How about this: Words as alleles: connecting language evolution with Bayesian learners to models of genetic drift Well, although this paper specifically focused on language evolution, it is an interesting attempt at modelling drift outside of population genetics.
Just the ticket! Although, it raises the spectre of the units themselves evolving (like the English double word infinitive versus the Latin single inflected word).
Not had the time to read it properly still in a holiday fog. Rather sophisticated in a number of points made. I think the way they seem to be thinking and moving allows for drift to be factored without too much further effort. It does make a few very nice observations and is indeed rather interesting.
n.b. M.J. Browns division into social and cultural appears to have a pure theory base. Popper’s World 3 meets Niche Construction. The definitions she uses in the paper just melt into each other and are not as distinct as concluded. It seems a somewhat rigid division in contrast to some of the other ideas presented, that do capture the movement and fluidity of the subject rather well indeed I thought. http://www.stanford.edu/~melbrown/melbrown/melissa_brown.html