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Darwinism Without Selection? A Lesson from Cultural Evolutionary Theory

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Natural Selection

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development ((EBNPD,volume 3))

Abstract

Wondering about “how Darwinian” cultural change actually is, some authors have recently stressed that there are different degrees to which a process can be considered as evolutionary. Some of them advocate for a central role of selective processes in cultural evolution, while others deny that these are relevant to explain cultural change, if not incidentally. Taking a cue from this debate, in this chapter, I shall discuss a series of theoretical and explanatory commitments usually adopted by those that, like cultural evolutionists, aim to extend evolutionary theory to non-strictly biological domains. My goal is to identify a class of evolutionary factors that, although frequently neglected in the debate, may be actually qualified as Darwinian and, consequently, argue for a more complete picture of evolutionary change. These factors are demographic factors, that is, factors related to the size, density and structure of populations. After having described in some detail in which way they differ from other causes of evolution, I shall relate the discussion in cultural evolutionary theory to a broader debate about the importance of natural selection in Darwinian thinking.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To be precise, Lewontin introduces a third requirement to be satisfied by evolutionary theories, that is, empirical sufficiency. An evolutionary theory is empirically sufficient if scientists are able to measure the parameters that they introduce to formulate the laws of transformation. This is tantamount to say that the causal representation offered by an evolutionary theory should not be attainable just in principle, but also in practice. Lewontin is sceptical about the capacity of the genetic theory of evolution to fully satisfy this requirement. This is certainly a problem also for cultural evolutionary theory, but I shall not discuss it directly here.

  2. 2.

    Notice that cultural selection does not necessarily favour genetically fittest variants. Since social learning is usually less costly or more effective than individual trial-and-error, partially maladaptive cultural variants (such as certain unhealthy eating habits) may be maintained within a population, evolve and even subvert “genetically-coded” behaviours.

  3. 3.

    This is arguably the case of “purely statistical” theories (Matthen and Ariew 2002).

  4. 4.

    This is indeed, according to some authors, the most common scenario in evolution (see, for a discussion of ideas related to this claim, Tattersall’s chapter in this volume).

  5. 5.

    For some more accurate remarks on the controversy between Mendelians and biometricians, and the origins of population genetics, see Adams’s chapter and Ochoa’s first contribution in this volume.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq Grant N°402619/2016-1) and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia de Portugal (FCT Contract N° DL57/2016/CP1479/CT0064) for the financial support.

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  1. Centro de Filosofia das Ciências, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Lorenzo Baravalle

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Correspondence to Lorenzo Baravalle .

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  1. School of Liberal Education and Department of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada

    Richard G. Delisle

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Baravalle, L. (2021). Darwinism Without Selection? A Lesson from Cultural Evolutionary Theory. In: Delisle, R.G. (eds) Natural Selection. Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65536-5_15

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