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Cultural Evolution (cultural + evolution)
Selected AbstractsEntrepreneurship, Money and Coordination: Hayek's Theory of Cultural Evolution.ECONOMICA, Issue 301 2009By JURGEN G. BACKHAUS No abstract is available for this article. [source] SONG LEARNING ACCELERATES ALLOPATRIC SPECIATIONEVOLUTION, Issue 9 2004R. F. Lachlan Abstract The songs of many birds are unusual in that they serve a role in identifying conspecific mates, yet they are also culturally transmitted. Noting the apparently high rate of diversity in one avian taxon, the songbirds, in which song learning appears ubiquitous, it has often been speculated that cultural transmission may increase the rate of speciation. Here we examine the possibility that song learning affects the rate of allopatric speciation. We construct a population-genetic model of allopatric divergence that explores the evolution of genes that underlie learning preferences (predispositions to learn some songs over others). We compare this with a model in which mating signals are inherited only genetically. Models are constructed for the cases where songs and preferences are affected by the same or different loci, and we analyze them using analytical local stability analysis combined with simulations of drift and directional sexual selection. Under nearly all conditions examined, song divergence occurs more readily in the learning model than in the nonlearning model. This is a result of reduced frequency-dependent selection in the learning models. Cultural evolution causes males with unusual genotypes to tend to learn from the majority of males around them, and thus develop songs compatible with the majority of the females in the population. Unusual genotypes can therefore be masked by learning. Over a wide range of conditions, learning therefore reduces the waiting time for speciation to occur and can be predicted to accelerate the rate of speciation. [source] The Marriage of Marx and Darwin?HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2002Doyne Dawson Recent attempts to develop scientific research strategies for cultural evolution have mostly drawn upon evolutionary biology, but within anthropology there is also an influential tradition of non-biological evolutionary thought whose basic principle is adaptation to the environment. This article is mainly concerned with the "cultural materialist" school of Marvin Harris, but also treats the recent attempt of Jared Diamond to create a more radical model of evolutionary ecology. I argue that the ecological tradition does not represent a real alternative to neo-Darwinism and is in fact a pseudo-Darwinist theory. I also suggest that the bias in favor of materialistic explanation in cultural evolution may not be justified. [source] Living Modern in Mid-Century HoustonJOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION, Issue 1 2008Conserving the Menil House Philip Johnson's house, designed for wealthy art patrons and social activists John and Dominique de Menil in 1948, Houston, introduced the culturally conservative city to the modern aesthetic of the international style. It stimulated a generation of mid-century Houston architects who promulgated the ideas of Johnson's mentor, Mies van der Rohe. It also initiated a productive relationship between the architect and Houston where Johnson's design interests evolved from the international style to the figural high-rise towers and the near-kitsch historicist inspiration at the University of Houston. Stern and Bucek Architects' recent conservation project reflects on the role of the house, its owners, and its architect in a city's cultural evolution. [source] Rapid evolution of social learningJOURNAL OF EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY, Issue 9 2009M. FRANZ Abstract Culture is widely thought to be beneficial when social learning is less costly than individual learning and thus may explain the enormous ecological success of humans. Rogers (1988. Does biology constrain culture. Am. Anthropol. 90: 819,831) contradicted this common view by showing that the evolution of social learning does not necessarily increase the net benefits of learned behaviours in a variable environment. Using simulation experiments, we re-analysed extensions of Rogers' model after relaxing the assumption that genetic evolution is much slower than cultural evolution. Our results show that this assumption is crucial for Rogers' finding. For many parameter settings, genetic and cultural evolution occur on the same time scale, and feedback effects between genetic and cultural dynamics increase the net benefits. Thus, by avoiding the costs of individual learning, social learning can increase ecological success. Furthermore, we found that rapid evolution can limit the evolution of complex social learning strategies, which have been proposed to be widespread in animals. [source] Us, Them and It: Modules, Genes, Environments and EvolutionMIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 3 2008FIONA COWIE However, it suffers from two major theoretical flaws. First, Carruthers' concept of a module is weak, so much so that it robs his thesis of massive modularity of any real substance. Second, his conception of how the mind's modules evolved ignores the role of niche construction and cultural evolution to its detriment. [source] A taxonomy of biological informationOIKOS, Issue 2 2010Richard H. Wagner Reproduction, and thus information transfer across generations, is the most essential process of life, yet biologists lack a consensus on terms to define biological information. Unfortunately, multiple definitions of the same terms and other disagreements have long inhibited the development of a general framework for integrating the various categories of biological information. Currently, the only consensus is over two general categories, genetic information, which is encoded in DNA, and non-genetic information, which is extracted from the environment. Non-genetic information is the key to understanding gene-environment interactions and is the raw material of fields such as developmental plasticity, behavior, communication, social learning and cultural evolution. In effect, differences in information possessed by individuals produce phenotypic variation. We thus define biological information as ,factors that can affect the phenotype in ways that may influence fitness'. This definition encompasses all information that is potentially relevant to organisms, which includes the physical environment. Biological information can be acquired passively from genes or via processes such as epigenetics, parental effects and habitat inheritance, or actively by organisms sensing facts about their environment. The confusion over definitions mainly concerns non-genetic information, which takes many more forms than genetic information. Much of the confusion derives from definitions based on how information is used rather than on the facts from which it is extracted. We recognize that a fact becomes information once it is detected. Information can thus be viewed analogously to energy in being either potential or realized. Another source of confusion is in the use of words outside their usual meanings. We therefore present intuitive definitions and classify them according to categories of facts in a hierarchical framework. Clarifying these concepts and terms may help researchers to manipulate facts, allowing a fuller study of biological information. [source] A parasite-driven wedge: infectious diseases may explain language and other biodiversityOIKOS, Issue 9 2008Corey L. Fincher Parasite,host coevolutionary races are spatially variable across species' or human cultural ranges. Assortative sociality, biased toward local conspecifics, and limited dispersal (philopatry) in humans and other organisms can be adaptive through reduced contact with dangerous contagions harbored by distant/non-local conspecifics. These factors can generate cultural or population divergence. Thus, parasites are like a wedge driving groups apart through their effective creation of anticontagion behaviors. If this proposition is correct, then biological diversity should positively correlate with parasite diversity. Here we show that the worldwide distribution of indigenous human language diversity, a form of biodiversity, is strongly, positively related to human parasite diversity indicative of a legacy of parasite-mediated diversification. The significant pattern remains when potential confounds are removed. The pattern too is seen in each of the six world regions and is not confounded by regional differences in their history of colonization and conquest. We hypothesize that variation in limited dispersal and assortative sociality with conspecifics in response to the worldwide spatial variation in pathogen diversity provides a fundamental mechanism of population divergence explaining many important aspects of the geographic patterns of biodiversity. This hypothesis has broad implications for a diversity of research topics including language diversity, cultural evolution, speciation, phylogeny and biogeography. [source] Emergence and the Forms of CitiesARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Issue 3 2010Michael Weinstock Abstract Michael Weinstock's significant new book The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation calls into question the received notion of culture. Rather than perceiving civilisation as intrinsically human or humanist, standing outside and beyond nature, Weinstock positions human development alongside ecological development: the history of cultural evolution and the production of cities are set in the context of processes and forms of the natural world. In this extract from Chapter 7, Weinstock charts how the proliferation of cities and systems of cities and their extended metabolic systems across the world were characterised by episodic and irregular expansions, consolidation, collapse and subsequent reorganisation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Emergence and the Forms of MetabolismARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Issue 2 2010Michael Weinstock Abstract Earlier this year, Michael Weinstock published a seminal book, The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation, which challenges established cultural and architectural histories. The conventional worldview is expanded by placing human development alongside ecological development: the history of cultural evolution and the production of cities are set in the context of processes and forms of the natural world. As well as providing a far-reaching thesis, Weinstock's book gives lucid and accessible explanations of the complex systems of the physical world. In this abridged extract from Chapter 5, Weinstock explains the dynamics of individual and collective metabolisms from which intelligence and social and spatial orders emerge. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The control of cultural evolution has been tried, what's next?BIOESSAYS, Issue 8 2001Federico Focher No abstract is available for this article. [source] Language Acquisition Meets Language EvolutionCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 7 2010Nick Chater Abstract Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the "logical" problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology. [source] Explaining Color Term Typology With an Evolutionary ModelCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 1 2007Mike Dowman An expression-induction model was used to simulate the evolution of basic color terms to test Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis that the typological patterns observed in basic color term systems are produced by a process of cultural evolution under the influence of biases resulting from the special properties of universal focal colors. Ten agents were simulated, each of which could learn color term denotations by generalizing from examples using Bayesian inference, and for which universal focal red, yellow, green, and blue were especially salient, but unevenly spaced in the perceptual color space. Conversations between these agents, in which agents would learn from one another, were simulated over several generations, and the languages emerging at the end of each simulation were investigated. The proportion of color terms of each type correlated closely with the equivalent frequencies found in the World Color Survey, and most of the emergent languages could be placed on one of the evolutionary trajectories proposed by Kay and Maffi (1999). The simulation therefore demonstrates how typological patterns can emerge as a result of learning biases acting over a period of time. [source] From behavior to culture: An assessment of cultural evolution and a new synthesisCOMPLEXITY, Issue 6 2003Dwight ReadArticle first published online: 1 DEC 200 First page of article [source] | ||||||||||||||||