Selection, adaptation, inheritance and design in human culture: the view from the Price equation.

ABSTRACT: For decades, parts of the literature on human culture have been gripped by an analogy: culture changes in a way that is substantially isomorphic to genetic evolution. This leads to a number of sub-claims: that design-like properties in cultural traditions should be explained in a parallel way to the design-like features of organisms, namely with reference to selection; that culture is a system of inheritance; and that cultural evolutionary processes can produce adaptation in the genetic sense. The Price equation provides a minimal description of any evolutionary system, and a method for identifying the action of selection. As such, it helps clarify some of these claims about culture conceptually. Looking closely through the lens of the Price equation, the differences between genes and cult

SUBMITTER: Nettle D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7133501 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature