Culture and the Evolutionary ProcessHow do biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors combine to change societies over the long run? Boyd and Richerson explore how genetic and cultural factors interact, under the influence of evolutionary forces, to produce the diversity we see in human cultures. Using methods developed by population biologists, they propose a theory of cultural evolution that is an original and fair-minded alternative to the sociobiology debate. |
Contents
1 Overview | 1 |
2 Some Methodological Preliminaries | 19 |
3 The Cultural Inheritance System | 32 |
4 Guided Variation and the Evolution of Cultural Inheritance | 81 |
5 Biased Transmission and the Sociobiology Debate | 132 |
Conflicts between Cultural and Genetic Evolution | 172 |
7 Frequencydependent Bias and the Evolution of Cooperation | 204 |
8 Indirect Bias and the Evolution of Symbolic Traits | 241 |
9 Conclusion | 280 |
| 301 | |
| 317 | |
Common terms and phrases
acquired adaptive assume assumption asymmetric average bias allele bias and guided blending inheritance Chapter characterized complex conformist transmission cooperation correlated covariance cultural evolution cultural inheritance cultural parents cultural traits cultural transmission cultural variants depends determine direct directly biased transmission distribution of cultural dual inheritance theory effect environment environmental Equation estimate example force of guided frequency-dependent bias function genes genetic and cultural genetic fitness genetic parents genetic transmission genotype group selection guided variation habitat horticulturalist human behavior hypothesis imitation important increase the frequency indicator trait indirect bias indirectly biased trait individual learning individual's initial phenotype Lumsden and Wilson maladaptive mature phenotype mean value naive individual natural selection observational learning offspring parameter particular plausible population predictions preference trait probability random recursion relative representativeness heuristic result runaway process set of cultural sets of models simple model social learning societies sociobiological subpopulation suppose symbolic theory trans transmission rule transmitted variable X₁