CULTURAL EVOLUTION
The research paper is based on cultural evolution highlighting the main factors that bring about this type of evolution. It refers to this type of evolution as progressive social process which brings about variations in the cultural practices. The paper disagrees with the notion that cultural evolution can be explained using Darwinian evolution since they both apply different processes.
Introduction
From a broad perspective, most evolution theories seek to provide explanations of why various species are the way they are today. For several evolutionists, such explanations involve offering credible explanations to the traits that are possessed by species as well as their adaptation characteristics. Therefore, cultural evolution refers to the constant and progressive developments that take place in different societies over extended periods of time. In this particular sense of cultural evolution, it is equivalent to biological evolution. Notions of cultural evolution and the ideas of societal evolution offer a set of several theories which various anthropologists have not only promoted, but they also have criticized them. Most cultural sociologists and anthropologists use the assumption that humans possess natural social propensities and naturally create and develop shifting groups. These natural tendencies are the basis on which hominidae and hominids basic traits are formed. Therefore, cultural evolution suggests that over time, the human societies have the tendency of adapting towards certain optimal types of organizations in order to respond to the changing environmental and social stimuli. Cultural evolution is to a great extent not consistent with biological evolution as put forward by Charles Darwin.
Cultural evolution
Cultural evolution thus refers to the progressive development a society undergoes successively to better and more advanced stages of development. The concept of cultural evolution is much dominant among the western nations because most of the current civilization is thought to have originated from the western nations. Through cultural evolution, human societies have managed to advance in several aspects. Thus considering how the early man lived and the modern man, there are great differences and they have all been brought about by cultural evolution. Through this type of evolution, societies have accumulated significant variations over the years, and these variations are the ones which can be used in explaining the major differences between the current modern societies and the ones which existed during the early ages. However, even though Darwinian Theory was highly successful in explaining biological evolution, it can only be applied to a very limited extent in explaining cultural evolution.
Cultural evolution is largely a social process and it does not involve any genetic variations in order to take place. The variations of culture are basically attributed to the information that is fed into the brains of people and has nothing to do with the genetic state of an individual. People living in a certain society are likely to develop their own culture which is different from the one that is practiced in other regions. However, even if an individual is separated from others, he or she will not develop different genes since the ones he has are inherent. This implies that whereas it is possible for a group of people that have been separated from the rest to undergo a different cultural evolution due to the information that will be fed to their brains, biological evolutions will only take place when there is genetic variation.
Recent studies such as the one done by Mesoudi, Whiten, Laland (2004), debates concerning memes utility have indicated that there are fundamental misunderstandings regarding the cultural evolutions nature. This is due to the fact that memeticists together with their critics appear to share the perception that principles of evolution can only be used in cultural evolution if culture is taken to be as a result of gene like replicators transmission. Memeticists thus believe that these particles exist and hence the reasoning of Darwin which was highly essential in biology can also be used in culture. However, these replicating particles are not in existence, therefore implying that it is not in order for the ideas of Darwin to be applied in culture evolution. By taking cultural evolution as a Darwin process, it is like basically arguing that both cultural and biological evolutions have been grossly misguided by excessive enthusiastic analogies between culture and genes. Cultural evolution cannot be based on the Darwinian evolution of species since the changes that take place in the context of societies are not controlled by genetic changes. According to biological evolution as put forward by Darwin, species change due to the cumulative genetic changes that take place in organisms over time.
Culture can basically be understood mainly as the information that is put and stored in the brains of human beings. Such information is put into these brains through several social learning mechanisms. Taking into account concepts of population dynamics and those of evolution evolutionary models, they are quite useful in explaining and understanding the manner in which various processes work. However, in doing so, it is very important to apply the suitable models of biological and cultural evolution. It is not in order for the same models and concepts to be used in both cultural and biological evolutions since they both have different processes and mechanisms. Cultural evolution models demand that it is extremely important to pay very close attention to the social and psychological processes that are involved. The processes involved in biological evolution are completely different from the ones that take place in cultural evolution.
From a broad perspective, biological evolution by Darwin is not in agreement with cultural evolution. In cultural evolution, the mental representations are not usually discrete. This means that despite the fact that these mental representations are applicable as far as biological evolution is concerned, they are not useful in cultural evolution. Hence, since the models used in explaining Darwinian evolution assumes that genes are particles that are discrete, replicators, and such models cannot be used to explain cultural evolution since there are no such discrete genes. According to Darwinian biological evolution, replicators are highly essential in adaptive and cumulative evolution of species. However, replicators play very little role if any in cultural evolution. Instead of relying heavily on replicators, cultural evolution is largely dependent on the psychological biases. They are the ones which have a great effect on the spread of various cultural representations and thus they are the ones which should be used in the development of cultural evolution models as opposed to using replicators.
Cultural selection applies the principle of cultural fitness which is basically a mental representation that can be deduced from successful transmission via a population. On the other hand, Darwinian evolution proposes that species are selected naturally by their environments. In this case, selection is largely random depending on the genetic characteristics possessed by species. Whereas in cultural evolution the sociological aspects which do not fit well in the new form of society are eliminated while the ones preferred by the society members continue, in Darwinian evolution, it is the species themselves that are eliminated or survive in a certain environment. Species are randomly selected by their environments if a species does not have the required traits to enable it survive in a certain environment, it is eliminated leaving only the species possessing the traits that are preferred by the environment. While the genes of the species that are not favored by the environment are eventually eliminated, the genes favored by the environment remain and therefore the new species will not have the undesired traits. This process is completely different from the one involved in cultural evolution. In this type of evolution, the brains of human beings are fed with information which they use in choosing the cultural values they will carry on and the ones that will be dropped.
The Darwinian biological evolution cannot be applied in cultural evolution due to the fact that unlike genes which are transmitted from one organism to another through inheritance, notions and thoughts cannot be transmitted from one human beings brain to the brain of another individual through a similar process. Genetic inheritance is basically the backbone of Darwinian evolution. Genes are passed from the parent to the offspring. The new offspring thus has genes from both parents. On the other hand, cultural evolution is mainly driven by ideas and notions that are fed into the brains of human beings through social learning. Unlike genes, these ideas are not entirely introduced naturally into the brains of human beings. Moreover, people have the capacity of either accepting or rejecting some ideas that are likely to bring about cultural evolution. It is however not possible for the species to choose the genes that will result into Darwinian evolution. This clearly shows that it is not in order to consider these two types of evolution to be similar.
Cultural evolution is brought about by various mental representations in the brains of human beings which generate behaviors that are observable. These observable mental representations bring about public representation which is inferred by the mental representation that is underlying. Such representation is necessary for the generation of public representations that are similar thereby bringing about cultural evolution. There is however a major problem in that it is not guaranteed that the mental representation found in the subsequent brain is similar to the one which was in the first brain. This can only be guaranteed under genetic evolution where it is possible for certain characteristics to be transferred from one organism to the next.
Any given public representation is capable of generating infinite mental representations in the minds of other human beings and thus cultural evolution should follow such a model. The mental representations are also capable of being replicated from one human being to the next only if majority of the people induce mental representations that are unique from a certain public representation. Furthermore, the inferential processes usually transform most mental representations in a systematic manner. Therefore, unlike in the case of genetic transmission which brings about biological evolution, cultural evolution is largely biased towards certain representations. These representations are usually favored by psychological inference processes known as cognitive actors. It is therefore not possible for cultural evolution to take the processes of Darwinian evolution as in both cases different elements are required.
In fact, in virtually all cases, transmissions of culture do not involve discrete replication of accurate gene like units. This is due to the fact that the cognitive attractors are more likely to rapidly concentrate themselves around cultural variations within a certain population. Rather than cultural variants continuum, majority of individuals will hold some representation close to an attractor. Should there be only a single attractor, then it will most probably dominate. But it appears that in most cases, the attractors are several and thus many other selective forces will in turn play the role of increasing the frequency of individuals holding certain representations close to specific attractors as opposed to holding others. In such situations, it is possible for even the weak selective forces to have a great impact on the final representation that will be found in the population. However, in the case of genetic variations which are responsible for brining about biological evolution, the cognitive factors are not involved. Instead, offsprings inherit such genes involuntarily from their parents and therefore they cannot determine the variations that will take place within a certain population. Whereas it is possible for the selective forces that are weak to determine the ultimate distribution in a population, the same is not possible under biological evolution. Under Darwinian evolution, only the strong selective forces have the ability of determining the final populations distribution. Bearing such in mind, it is therefore inappropriate for both cultural and Darwinian evolution to be considered as one.
Conclusion
Cultural evolution is the process by which the cultures of societies change and develop to become more developed and advanced. This process is largely controlled by social factors which are learnt by the society members through social learning. On the other hand, Darwinian evolution basically involves variation of species due to genetic factors. The two processes are therefore different and independent of each other and thus one cannot be used to explain the other.
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