Abstract
Coen offers a unified explanation of natural selection, development, learning and cultural change, based on seven fundamental principles: population variation, persistence, reinforcement, competition, cooperation, combinatorial richness and recurrence. I discuss whether all seven principles are justified, successfully fit the four processes, encompass life processes only, and have any strong explanatory import. I find each of these claims doubtful.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
Even if the equivalence is not logically valid, it almost always holds; see Okasha (2006: 38-38). I here neglect the unlikely cases in which it does not.
Also note that natural selection could operate even if organisms do not reproduce at all, in virtue of differential survival rates. Reinforcement would thus be absent. However, Lewontin’s conditions would equally not apply, as they rely on heritability and thus presuppose reproduction to some extent. As cases of non-reproductive survivors are equally problematic for both sets of principles, I neglect them in what follows.
See for instance Bourke (2011:78–79, 105–106) about the importance of ‘shared reproductive fate’.
For a convincing criticism, see Sperber (2000).
Note that adopting the perspective of existing works, with their explicit use of natural selection concepts to understand cultural evolution, would have automatically made the principles fit the latter as well as they do the former.
References
Borgers T, Sarin R (1997) Learning through reinforcement and the replicator dynamics. J Econ Theory 74:235–265
Bourke A (2011) Principles of social evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Boyd R, Richerson PJ (2005) The origin and evolution of cultures. Oxford University Press, New York
Calcott B, Sterelny K (eds) (2011) Major transitions in evolution revisited. MIT Press, Cambridge
Cavalli-Sforza L, Feldman M (1981) Cultural transmission and evolution: a quantitative approach. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Claidière N, André J-B (2012) The transmission of genes and culture: a questionable analogy. Evol Biol 39:12–24
Ehrlich PR, Levin SA (2005) The evolution of norms. PLoS Biol 3(6):e194
Lewontin R (1970) The units of selection. Annu Rev Ecol Syst 1:1–18
Maynard SmithJ, Szathmáry E (1995) The major transitions in evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Okasha S (2006) Evolution and the levels of selection. Oxford University Press, New York
Pinker S (2012) The false allure of group selection. Edge. Retrieved from http://edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection
Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2005) Not by genes alone. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Skyrms B (2010) Signals: evolution, learning, and information. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Sperber D (2000) An objection to the memetic approach to culture. In: Aunger R (ed) Darwinizing culture. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 163–173
Sterelny K, Griffiths PE (1999) Sex and death: an introduction to the philosophy of biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Woodward J (2009) Scientific explanation. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Paternotte, C. Seven principles to rule them all. Biol Philos 28, 683–692 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9368-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9368-0