Review
An evolutionary framework for cultural change: Selectionism versus communal exchange

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Abstract

Dawkinsʼ replicator-based conception of evolution has led to widespread mis-application of selectionism across the social sciences because it does not address the paradox that necessitated the theory of natural selection in the first place: how do organisms accumulate change when traits acquired over their lifetime are obliterated? This is addressed by von Neumannʼs concept of a self-replicating automaton (SRA). A SRA consists of a self-assembly code that is used in two distinct ways: (1) actively deciphered during development to construct a self-similar replicant, and (2) passively copied to the replicant to ensure that it can reproduce. Information that is acquired over a lifetime is not transmitted to offspring, whereas information that is inherited during copying is transmitted. In cultural evolution there is no mechanism for discarding acquired change. Acquired change can accumulate orders of magnitude faster than, and quickly overwhelm, inherited change due to differential replication of variants in response to selection. This prohibits a selectionist but not an evolutionary framework for culture and the creative processes that fuel it. The importance non-Darwinian processes in biological evolution is increasingly recognized. Recent work on the origin of life suggests that early life evolved through a non-Darwinian process referred to as communal exchange that does not involve a self-assembly code, and that natural selection emerged from this more haphazard, ancestral evolutionary process. It is proposed that communal exchange provides an evolutionary framework for culture that enables specification of cognitive features necessary for a (real or artificial) societies to evolve culture. This is supported by a computational model of cultural evolution and a conceptual network based program for documenting material cultural history, and it is consistent with high levels of human cooperation.

Introduction

Like organisms, elements of culture exhibit descent with modification; new ideas and artifacts build adaptively on previous ones. If it were possible to root the social and behavioral sciences in an evolutionary framework, they might achieve a unification comparable with Darwinʼs unification of the life sciences. Thus it is unsurprising that, dating back to Herbert Spencerʼs introduction of the notion of social Darwinism a few years after Darwinʼs Origin of Species, Darwinian thinking has been applied to a range of phenomena outside of biology, including creativity [14], [113], neural copying and pruning [11], [12], [13], [23], [26], law [56], cosmology [119], computer-mediated communication [75], [77], and perhaps most extensively, cultural and economic change [7], [8], [15], [30], [72], [87], [88], [109], [110]. Elements of culture build on one another cumulatively, as demonstrated even in laboratory settings [10]. Not only does culture accumulate over time, but it adapts, diversifies, becomes increasingly complex, and exhibits phenomena observed in biological evolution such as niches, drift, epistasis, and punctuated equilibrium [5], [22], [29], [33], [121]. Processes of both biological and cultural evolution tend to gravitate toward a balance between differentiation (or divergence) and synthesis (or convergence) of different forms [100], [101]. Moreover, like biological evolution, culture is open-ended; there is no limit to the variety of new forms it can give rise to.

Clearly, those who participate in the evolution of culture are biological beings, but those who apply evolutionary principles to culture claim that culture constitutes a second Darwinian process, which although it piggybacks on the first, cannot be reduced to biology. It is acknowledged that some of what is considered cultural behavior can be accounted for by a purely biological explanation [4]. However, much as principles of physics do not go far toward an explanation of, say, the peacockʼs tail (though the physics of light and color play some role), biology does not go far toward an explanation of, say, the form and content of a haiku (though factors such as selective pressure for intelligence play some role).

To explain how and why such forms arise, accumulate, and adapt over time, it is necessary to develop a scientific framework for cultural evolution. Some cultural evolution research addresses specific cultural phenomena, such as cultural group selection [7] and cultural altruism [6], [31]. Such phenomena are generally tacked onto a selectionist framework, according to which culture evolves through a process algorithmically equivalent to natural selection. This paper summarizes why a selectionist theory of cultural evolution is inappropriate, and presents an alternative evolutionary framework for culture based on evidence that natural selection emerged from a more ancestral process of communal exchange. The paper aims to develop a theory of cultural evolution that can (1) explain why humans alone have evolved complex, cumulative, open-ended culture, (2) propose specific features of humans that enabled culture to evolve, and (3) predict whether new life forms, natural, artificial, or found elsewhere in our universe, should be able to evolve culture on the basis of these features. Selectionist accounts of cultural evolution have not yielded widely acceptable solutions to these challenges, nor is this accomplished by everyday observations of cultural change. Although it is undisputed that psychological and social phenomena are deeply affected by organic evolution, this paper focuses on applications of evolutionary theory to processes other than organic evolution.

To make writings on these matters less awkward, the terms ‘Darwinian’ and ‘selectionist’ are used as a shorthand for ‘by means of natural selection or a process that is algorithmically equivalent to it’. It would be wrong to interpret this as implying that Darwin never gave thought to evolution by means other than natural selection. He was, of course, immersed in the views of his day, and considered several possible explanations for adaptive change (e.g., his ultimately unsuccessful theory of gemmules). Moreover, although Darwin did not use the term neutral evolution, he acknowledged that evolutionary change can involve fixation of variants that confer no selective advantage over previous adaptations; nevertheless, neutral evolution is commonly referred to as non-Darwinian [71], [76], [125]. Similarly, although Darwin was not committed to the idea that all life evolved from a single common ancestor, processes such as horizontal gene transfer (that is, genes transmitted between organisms in a manner other than through traditional reproduction) are commonly referred to as non-Darwinian [134]. Finally, the existence of non-Darwinian processes does not negate the feasibility of Darwinian ones, and vice versa. (For example, in biology, genes transferred horizontally can be fixed in a population by selection. In short, to facilitate the readability of this paper, ‘Darwinism’ is used in reference to, not the entire collection of musings Darwin had about evolution, but the theory he is famous for: natural selection.

Section snippets

The algorithmic structure of natural selection

The paradox faced by Darwin was: how do species accumulate change when traits acquired over their lifetimes are obliterated? His insight was to shift the focus from the organism to the population, and the distinction between inherited and acquired traits. Although acquired traits are discarded, inherited traits are not. When random mutations of inherited traits are beneficial for their bearers, their bearers have more offspring, and these traits proliferate at the expense of less beneficial

Efforts to provide a selectionist framework for cultural evolution

Having examined the algorithmic structure of natural selection, we can ascertain whether cultural evolution has this structure. Culture refers to the values, artifacts, customs, and so forth, of a social group. Elements of culture are transmitted vertically from one generation to the next, and horizontally amongst members of a generation. Thus, two key components of culture are: a means of generating novel behavior, and a means of spreading it through imitation and other forms of social

An evolutionary framework for creativity?

Not just cultural change but also the individual-level creative processes that fuel it have also been described as Darwinian. Ideas become more complex and adapted over time, even in the mind of a single creator before they are expressed to others [14], [31], [93], [128], [129], [130], [131]. Converging evidence suggests that creative ideation involves shifting between two forms of thought [27], [34], [70], [83], [138]: (1) A divergent or associative process that predominates during idea

Evolution through communal exchange

Growing evidence that the evolutionary dynamic that gave rise to translation was non-Darwinian [134] suggests that natural selection may be inapplicable to the early stages of any evolutionary process. Indeed in developing a theoretical framework for cultural evolution, it is instructive to look at how early life itself evolved. Research into the origin of life is stymied by the improbability of a spontaneously generated structure that replicates using a self-assembly code (such as the genetic

Applying communal exchange to cultural evolution

If natural selection cannot explain how life arose, nor the earliest chapter of its evolutionary history, it is unsurprising that efforts to apply it to culture have yielded little in the way of explanatory or predictive power. If it took time for natural selection to emerge as the mechanism by which life evolves, it seems reasonable that culture too would evolve by way of this more primitive mechanism. Thus it is proposed that, like these earliest life forms, culture evolves through a

Conclusions and future directions

Given the current accelerated pace of cultural change, and its transformative effects on ourselves and our planet, it is becoming imperative to obtain a solid understanding of how culture evolves. Since cultural evolution, like biological evolution, results in the generation of cumulative, open-ended, adaptive novelty, it would appear to make sense to draw upon biological evolutionary theory to explain cultural evolution.

The propagation of Dawkinsʼ view of natural selection, a view that does

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted with the assistance of grants from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Fund for Scientific Research of Flanders, Belgium.

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