scholarly journals The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science in the Anthropocene

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Jürgen Renn
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Global Society ◽  
Historical Epistemology ◽  
Key Concepts

Abstract The paper argues that humanity has entered a new stage of evolution: epistemic evolution. Just as cultural evolution emerged against the background of biological evolution, epistemic evolution began as an aspect of cultural evolution and now dominates the global fate of humanity. It is characterized by the increasing dependence of global society on the achievements and further extension of science and technology in order to ensure its sustainability in the age of the Anthropocene. The historical development of knowledge is reviewed from an evolutionary perspective that introduces key concepts of an historical epistemology.

Sport and Successful Aging

Sport ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Schulkin
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Successful Aging ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Organ Systems ◽  
The Brain

What is clear is the richness of biology, culture, and deep relationships; sport reveals what makes us human in our biological evolution and in its modification and expansion into cultural evolution. An evolutionary perspective is one route to understanding sport; blended with our biology, culture fuels our capabilities. The evolution of the brain and other organ systems were vital steps in how we became able to do sport and how other hominoids did not. And research has now entered the arena of genetics and epigenetics in understanding sports capability.

scholarly journals How Good Are We At Evaluating Communicated Information?

2021 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 257-272
Author(s):  
Hugo Mercier
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Large Groups

AbstractAre we gullible? Can we be easily influenced by what others tell us, even if they do not deserve our trust? Many strands of research, from social psychology to cultural evolution suggest that humans are by nature conformist and eager to follow prestigious leaders. By contrast, an evolutionary perspective suggests that humans should be vigilant towards communicated information, so as not to be misled too often. Work in experimental psychology shows that humans are equipped with sophisticated mechanisms that allow them to carefully evaluate communicated information. These open vigilance mechanisms lead us to reject messages that clash with our prior beliefs, unless the source of the message has earned our trust, or provides good arguments, in which case we can adaptively change our minds. These mechanisms make us largely immune to mass persuasion, explaining why propaganda, political campaigns, advertising, and other attempts at persuading large groups nearly always fall in deaf ears. However, some false beliefs manage to spread through communication. I argue that most popular false beliefs are held reflectively, which means that they have little effect on our thoughts and behaviors, and that many false beliefs can be socially beneficial. Accepting such beliefs thus reflects a much weaker failure in our evaluation of communicated information than might at first appear.

The human brain: Chairman’s introduction

1981 ◽  
Vol 292 (1057) ◽  
pp. 151-153
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Positive Feedback ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Internal Models ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
Myelin Sheaths ◽  
The Brain

Much has been said at the symposium about the pre-eminent role of the brain in the continuing emergence of man. Tobias has spoken of its explosive enlargement during the last 1 Ma, and how much of its enlargement in individual ontogeny is postnatal. We are born before our brains are fully grown and ‘wired up ’. During our long adolescence we build up internal models of the outside world and of the relations of parts of our bodies to it and to one another. Neurons that are present at birth spread their dendrites and project axons which acquire their myelin sheaths, and establish innumerable contacts with other neurons, over the years. New connections are formed; genetically endowed ones are stamped in or blanked off. People born without arms may grow up to use their toes in skills that are normally manual. Tobias, Darlington and others have stressed the enormous survival value of adaptive behaviour and the ‘positive feedback’ relation between biological and cultural evolution. The latter, the unique product of the unprecedentedly rapid biological evolution of big brains, advances on a time scale unknown to biological evolution.

scholarly journals How culture and biology interact to shape language and the language faculty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Evolutionary Models ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Repeated Cycle ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Precise Relationship

Recent work suggests that linguistic structure develops through cultural evolution, as a consequence of the repeated cycle of learning and use by which languages persist. This work has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of the cognitive basis for language: in particular, human language and the cognitive capacities underpinning it are likely to have been shaped by co-evolutionary processes, where the cultural evolution of linguistic systems is shaped by and in turn shapes the biological evolution of the capacities underpinning language learning. I review several models of this co-evolutionary process, which suggest that the precise relationship between evolved biases in individuals and the structure of linguistic systems depends on the extent to which cultural evolution masks or unmasks individual-level cognitive biases from selection. I finish by discussing how these co-evolutionary models might be extended to cases where the biases involved in learning are themselves shaped by experience, as is the case for language.

Modeling Social Learning and Culture

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Hoppitt ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Model Building ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Reaction Diffusion ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Mathematical Expressions ◽  
Mathematical Techniques ◽  
Neutral Models

This chapter describes a variety of approaches to modeling social learning, cultural evolution, and gene-culture coevolution. The model-building exercise typically starts with a set of assumptions about the key processes to be explored, along with the nature of their relations. These assumptions are then translated into the mathematical expressions that constitute the model. The operation of the model is then investigated, normally using a combination of analytical mathematical techniques and simulation, to determine relevant outcomes, such as the equilibrium states or patterns of change over time. The chapter presents examples of the modeling of cultural transmission and considers parallels between cultural and biological evolution. It then discusses theoretical approaches to social learning and cultural evolution, including population-genetic style models of cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution, neutral models and random copying, social foraging theory, spatially explicit models, reaction-diffusion models, agent-based models, and phylogenetic models.

The Dawn of Civilization

2018 ◽  
pp. 234-263
Author(s):  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Slow Rate ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Morphological Evolution ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Genetic Evolution ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Adaptive Challenges

This chapter traces the evolution of human civilization from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to the advent of agriculture and its large-scale impacts on the world. It describes this history in three ages of adaptive evolution. First, there was the age in which biological evolution dominated, in which we adapted to the circumstances of life in a manner no different from every other creature. Second came the age when gene–culture coevolution was in the ascendency. Through cultural activities, our ancestors set challenges to which they adapted biologically. In doing so, they released the brake that the relatively slow rate of independent environmental change imposes on other species. The results are higher rates of morphological evolution in humans compared to other mammals, with human genetic evolution reported as accelerating more than a hundredfold over the last 40,000 years. Now we live in the third age, where cultural evolution dominates. Cultural practices provide humanity with adaptive challenges, but these are then solved through further cultural activity, before biological evolution gets moving.

Evolution of the arts

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Steven Brown
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Species Specific

This chapter examines both the biological and cultural evolution of the arts. Biological evolution of the arts deals with how humans evolved the species-specific capacities to create and appreciate artworks, while cultural evolution is about how artworks themselves, as cultural products, undergo changes in persistence over historical time and geographic location. The study of biological evolution includes both phylogenetic (or historical) and adaptationist (or Darwinian) approaches. The study of cultural evolution of the arts reveals the importance of a ‘creativity/aesthetics cycle’ in which the products of human creativity get appraised for their level of appeal by the aesthetic system, allowing them to either be transmitted to future generations or die out. This unification of creativity and aesthetics has far-reaching implications for both fields of study.

scholarly journals The Role of Agricultural Economics in a Changing Environment

1975 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Ewing
Keyword(s):  
Program Development ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Applied Economics ◽  
Agricultural Economics ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The historical development of Agricultural Economics as a field of applied economics has been well-documented in books and journals by scholars within the profession. The relationship of Agricultural Economics to other social, biological and natural sciences has changed as the discipline has emerged and as forces of science and technology have been brought to bear on problems of our society.The objective of this paper is to define or establish the parameters of Agricultural Economics but offer personal views on how economic forces within our economy have influenced program development in research involving many disciplines. In this process I will emphasize some of the areas where Agricultural Economics has made a major contribution and, in my judgement, can play an important role in the future.

Towards a unified science of cultural evolution

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Andrew Whiten ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Good Match ◽  
Social Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
The Social

We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods of systematics, paleobiology, and biogeography, whereas mathematical models derived from population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution. Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in “social cognitive neuroscience,” although many fundamental issues have yet to be resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.

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