scholarly journals Human evolution and transitions in individuality

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo C. Abrantes
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Dual Inheritance Theory ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Dual Inheritance ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates whether it is fruitful to describe the role culture began to play at some point in the hominin lineage as pointing to a transition in individuality, by reference to the works of Buss, Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry, Michod and Godfrey-Smith. The chief question addressed is whether a population of groups having different cultural phenotypes is either paradigmatically Darwinian or marginal, by using Godfrey-Smith’s representation of such transitions in a multi-dimensional space. Richerson and Boyd’s «dual inheritance» theory, and the explanation it provides of the evolution of cooperation in the hominin lineage, is taken into account to shed light on the way Godfrey-Smith deals with cultural evolution, especially concerning the amount of variation in a population of groups with various cultural phenotypes, the role played by multi-level selection in the evolutionary dynamics of such a population and the adequacy of different modalities of group-reproduction.KEYWORDSTRANSITIONS IN INDIVIDUALITY, CULTURAL EVOLUTION, DARWINIAN POPULATIONS, EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION, DUAL INHERITANCE THEORYRESUMENEste trabajo indaga acerca de si es fructífero o no describir el papel que la cultura comenzó a jugar en algún punto en el linaje de los homininos como si se tratara de una transición en la individualidad, en referencia a las obras de Buss, Maynard-Smith y Szathmáry, y Michod y Godfrey-Smith. La cuestión principal es si una población de grupos con diferentes fenotipos culturales es o bien paradigmáticamente darwiniana o bien marginal, usando para ello la representación de Godfrey-Smith de tales transiciones en un espacio multidimensional. La teoría de la «herencia dual» de Richerson y Boyd, y la explicación que proporciona de la cooperación en el linaje hominino es tenida en cuenta para arrojar luz sobre el modo en que Godfrey-Smith trata la evolución cultural, especialmente en lo concerniente a la cantidad de variación en una población de grupos con diversos fenotipos culturales, el papel jugado por la selección multi-nivel en el dinámica evolutiva de tal población y la adecuación de diferentes modalidades de reproducción de grupos.PALABRAS CLAVETRANSICIONES EN LA INDIVIDUALIDAD, EVOLUCIÓN CULTURAL, POBLACIONES DARWINIANAS, EVOLUCIÓN DE LA COOPERACIÓN, TEORÍA DE LA HERENCIA DUAL

Book Reviews

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 444-446 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Evolutionary Explanation ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Santa Fe ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Dual Inheritance Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dual Inheritance

Scott E. Page of University of Michigan and Santa Fe Institute reviews “Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation” by Natalie Henrich and Joseph Henrich. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Examines the evolution of cooperation and altruism in the human species. Discusses evolution, culture, cooperation, and the Chaldeans; dual inheritance theory--the evolution of cultural capacities and cultural evolution; evolutionary theory and the social psychology of human cooperation; the Chaldeans….”

7. Human behaviour, mind, and culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-118
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Dual Inheritance Theory ◽  
Nature Vs Nurture ◽  
Dual Inheritance

‘Human behaviour, mind, and culture’ examines the implications of biology for humans, asking whether human behaviour and culture can be explained in biological terms. The intelligence, language use, cultural inventions, technological prowess, and social institutions of our own species, Homo sapiens, seem to set us apart from other species. Can biology shed any light on humanity and its achievements? One way to tackle this question is to ask whether human behaviour can be understood in biological terms. The nature vs nurture debate is discussed, followed by the approaches of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to the study of human behaviour. Finally, cultural evolution—or dual inheritance theory—is considered and how this relates to biological evolution.

scholarly journals Cultural evolution of conformity and anticonformity

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (24) ◽  
pp. 13603-13614
Author(s):  
Kaleda Krebs Denton ◽  
Yoav Ram ◽  
Uri Liberman ◽  
Marcus W. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Population Subdivision ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
The Common

Conformist bias occurs when the probability of adopting a more common cultural variant in a population exceeds its frequency, and anticonformist bias occurs when the reverse is true. Conformist and anticonformist bias have been widely documented in humans, and conformist bias has also been observed in many nonhuman animals. Boyd and Richerson used models of conformist and anticonformist bias to explain the evolution of large-scale cooperation, and subsequent research has extended these models. We revisit Boyd and Richerson’s original analysis and show that, with conformity based on more than three role models, the evolutionary dynamics can be more complex than previously assumed. For example, we show the presence of stable cycles and chaos under strong anticonformity and the presence of new equilibria when both conformity and anticonformity act at different variant frequencies, with and without selection. We also investigate the case of population subdivision with migration and find that the common claim that conformity can maintain between-group differences is not always true. Therefore, the effect of conformity on the evolution of cooperation by group selection may be more complicated than previously stated. Finally, using Feldman and Liberman’s modifier approach, we investigate the conditions under which a rare modifier of the extent of conformity or the number of role models can invade a population. Understanding the dynamics of conformist- and anticonformist-biased transmission may have implications for research on human and nonhuman animal behavior, the evolution of cooperation, and frequency-dependent transmission in general.

scholarly journals The Encultured Primate: Thresholds and Transitions in Hominin Cultural Evolution

Philosophies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Chris Buskes
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Animal Species ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Major Transitions ◽  
Extant Species ◽  
Shed Light

This article tries to shed light on the mystery of human culture. Human beings are the only extant species with cumulative, evolving cultures. Many animal species do have cultural traditions in the form of socially transmitted practices but they typically lack cumulative culture. Why is that? This discrepancy between humans and animals is even more puzzling if one realizes that culture seems highly advantageous. Thanks to their accumulated knowledge and techniques our early ancestors were able to leave their cradle in Africa and swarm out across the planet, thereby adjusting themselves to a whole range of new environments. Without culture this would have been impossible. So we may ask once again: if cumulative culture is so useful, why don’t other animals have it? In order to explain this mystery I won’t appeal to the major transitions in human evolution—like walking upright, crafting stone tools and controlling fire, etc.,—because that would be question begging. Instead I try to unearth the mechanisms that caused those evolutionary turning points to occur in the first place. It seems that unlike other animals, humans are predisposed to efficiently acquire, store and transmit cultural information in such ways that our cultures can genuinely evolve.

scholarly journals The Algebra of Assortative Encounters and the Evolution of Cooperation

2003 ◽  
Vol 05 (03) ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore C. Bergstrom
Keyword(s):  
Prisoner's Dilemma ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Assortative Matching ◽  
Simple Index ◽  
Social Encounters ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way in which assortative matching can maintain cooperative behavior under evolutionary dynamics. If encounters are random, then in Prisoner's Dilemma games, defectors necessarily get higher payoffs than cooperators and thus will eventually prevail. But if matching is assortative, the cost of cooperating may be repaid by higher probabilities of playing against a cooperating opponent. This paper shows that a simple index of assortativity allows a unifying treatment of the evolutionary dynamics in a wide variety of models of social encounters.

Géographie et cartographie fictionnelles dans l’Utopie (1516) de Thomas More

Moreana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 47 (Number 181- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 9-68
Author(s):  
Jean Du Verger
Keyword(s):  
Complex Network ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The Third ◽  
Editio Princeps ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

The philosophical and political aspects of Utopia have often shadowed the geographical and cartographical dimension of More’s work. Thus, I will try to shed light on this aspect of the book in order to lay emphasis on the links fostered between knowledge and space during the Renaissance. I shall try to show how More’s opusculum aureum, which is fraught with cartographical references, reifies what Germain Marc’hadour terms a “fictional archipelago” (“The Catalan World Atlas” (c. 1375) by Abraham Cresques ; Zuane Pizzigano’s portolano chart (1423); Martin Benhaim’s globe (1492); Martin Waldseemüller’s Cosmographiae Introductio (1507); Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia (1513) ; Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario (1528) ; Diogo Ribeiro’s world map (1529) ; the Grand Insulaire et Pilotage (c.1586) by André Thevet). I will, therefore, uncover the narrative strategies used by Thomas More in a text which lies on a complex network of geographical and cartographical references. Finally, I will examine the way in which the frontispiece of the editio princeps of 1516, as well as the frontispiece of the third edition published by Froben at Basle in 1518, clearly highlight the geographical and cartographical aspect of More’s narrative.

scholarly journals Automatic Reconstruction of Multi-Level Indoor Spaces from Point Cloud and Trajectory

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 3493
Author(s):  
Gahyeon Lim ◽  
Nakju Doh
Keyword(s):  
Point Cloud ◽  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Reconstruction Method ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Indoor Space ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Level Building ◽  
Indoor Spaces ◽  
Data Term

Remarkable progress in the development of modeling methods for indoor spaces has been made in recent years with a focus on the reconstruction of complex environments, such as multi-room and multi-level buildings. Existing methods represent indoor structure models as a combination of several sub-spaces, which are constructed by room segmentation or horizontal slicing approach that divide the multi-room or multi-level building environments into several segments. In this study, we propose an automatic reconstruction method of multi-level indoor spaces with unique models, including inter-room and inter-floor connections from point cloud and trajectory. We construct structural points from registered point cloud and extract piece-wise planar segments from the structural points. Then, a three-dimensional space decomposition is conducted and water-tight meshes are generated with energy minimization using graph cut algorithm. The data term of the energy function is expressed as a difference in visibility between each decomposed space and trajectory. The proposed method allows modeling of indoor spaces in complex environments, such as multi-room, room-less, and multi-level buildings. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated for seven indoor space datasets.

scholarly journals Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-147
Author(s):  
Ryutaro Uchiyama ◽  
Rachel Spicer ◽  
Michael Muthukrishna
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Behavioral Genetics ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Genetic Effects ◽  
Genetic Heritability ◽  
Innovation And Diffusion ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
The Life Course

Abstract Behavioral genetics and cultural evolution have both revolutionized our understanding of human behavior—largely independent of each other. Here we reconcile these two fields under a dual inheritance framework, offering a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between genes and culture. Going beyond typical analyses of gene–environment interactions, we describe the cultural dynamics that shape these interactions by shaping the environment and population structure. A cultural evolutionary approach can explain, for example, how factors such as rates of innovation and diffusion, density of cultural sub-groups, and tolerance for behavioral diversity impact heritability estimates, thus yielding predictions for different social contexts. Moreover, when cumulative culture functionally overlaps with genes, genetic effects become masked, unmasked, or even reversed, and the causal effects of an identified gene become confounded with features of the cultural environment. The manner of confounding is specific to a particular society at a particular time, but a WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) sampling problem obscures this boundedness. Cultural evolutionary dynamics are typically missing from models of gene-to-phenotype causality, hindering generalizability of genetic effects across societies and across time. We lay out a reconciled framework and use it to predict the ways in which heritability should differ between societies, between socioeconomic levels and other groupings within some societies but not others, and over the life course. An integrated cultural evolutionary behavioral genetic approach cuts through the nature–nurture debate and helps resolve controversies in topics such as IQ.

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