Abstract
Cultural evolutionary theory has been alternatively compared to a theory of forces, such as Newtonian mechanics, or the kinetic theory of gases. In this article, I clarify the scope and significance of these metatheoretical characterisations. First, I discuss the kinetic analogy, which has been recently put forward by Tim Lewens. According to it, cultural evolutionary theory is grounded on a bottom-up methodology, which highlights the additive effects of social learning biases on the emergence of large-scale cultural phenomena. Lewens supports this claim by arguing that it is a consequence of cultural evolutionists’ widespread commitment to population thinking. While I concur with Lewens that cultural evolutionists often actually conceive cultural change in aggregative terms, I think that the kinetic framework does not properly account for the explanatory import of population-level descriptions in cultural evolutionary theory. Starting from a criticism of Lewens’ interpretation of population thinking, I argue that the explanatory role of such descriptions is best understood within a dynamical framework—that is, a framework according to which cultural evolutionary theory is a theory of forces. After having spelled out the main features of this alternative interpretation, I elucidate in which respects it helps to outline a more accurate characterisation of the overarching structure of cultural evolutionary theory.
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Notes
This claim, as well as other dual-inheritance theorists’ statements concerning the biological evolution of the cognitive and behavioural faculties, has been criticised from different standpoints. More research is surely needed in order to better understand which are the evolutionary and developmental factors that have had a major impact on originating and moulding cooperative and social psychology. I would like to stress, nonetheless, that the details on human evolution and the origin of social skills, although obviously fundamental for a more realistic picture of cultural change processes, do not automatically prove or undermine specific conceptions of the dynamics of cultural change. Although, if it was eventually found that cultural transmission is completely disanalogous to biological inheritance, there would good reason to dismiss dual-inheritance theory, other minor adjustments to the specific mechanisms involved in social learning may be easily tolerated and incorporated into it.
This picture has been somehow complexified by recent research (see, for instance, Kendal et al. 2018). For simplicity, such developments are not taken into account.
Notice, by the way, that Lewens is not arguing that this is the right way to explain cultural change, but just that cultural evolutionists typically explain it in these terms.
In addition, it may be said that the regularity connecting cold climate and long fur admits more exceptions than Archimedes’ principle. Note, nevertheless, that also physical source laws must satisfy background conditions in order to support counterfactuals (in the case of Archimedes’ principle, for instance, the submerged object must not touch the bottom of the vessel in which it is submerged in, the fluid must not be a complex fluid, etc.).
This is, of course, a conceptual—and not necessarily temporal—sequence of steps.
That is, it is something akin to what metatheoretical structuralists call a “guiding-principle” (Moulines 1984).
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Acknowledgements
This research has been financially supported by the São Paulo research foundations (Grant No. 2015/22129-0) and the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Grant No. 402619/2016-1). Most of the work has been carried out during a stay at the Konrad Lorenz Institute (Klosterneuburg, Austria) in 2016 and a stay at the Centre of Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Portugal) in 2018. I heartily thank the members and fellows of both institutes for their support and useful discussions. I am indebted to Gustavo Caponi, Tim Lewens, Victor Luque, Pete Richerson, Davide Vecchi and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments to previous versions of this article.
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Baravalle, L. Cultural evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. Synthese 198, 2801–2820 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02247-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02247-0