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Robert Tulip 
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Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 197
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Location: Canberra
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 Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 4:08 pm Post subject:
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| DWill wrote: |
| I'm wondering why, in view of problems you mention below with fascist interpretations, it's even a good idea to merge these two. I have difficulty seeing what advantage there is to a comparison that seems to apply only metaphorically. The huge difference is one of agency. In the case of Darwinian adaptation, the forces that produce the changes are seen to lie outside any intention by the organism. It doesn't matter for now what this force is, even if some would say it could be God. |
Thanks DWill, my point is precisely that the comparison between cultural memes and physical genes is mechanical, not just metaphorical. Culture does in fact evolve by the Darwinian mechanism of cumulative adaptation. The free will of human agency is just one small factor in determining which strategies will prove adaptive. We do not decide which cultural forms will succeed – that would be like knowing how to write a number one pop song. Why certain memes ‘take off’ is often a mystery. Cultural changes do indeed “lie outside any intention by the organism”.
With fascism, the point is that it is highly maladaptive, despite its perverted use of Darwin. The underlying conflict between fascism and the evolutionary needs of our planet is a big part of why Hitler is a byword for evil. I think it is useful to discuss this problem as there is a widespread view that as soon as we try to apply evolution to culture we are advocating ‘survival of the fittest’. This was Spencer’s phrase which Darwin never supported.
There is a discussion of these themes by FA Hayek in his book The Constitution of Liberty. He contrasts the French approach of the Napoleonic Code which tries to determine law on the basis of reason, to the English approach which accepts precedent as the basis of common law. Hayek argues that English law, by allowing institutions to evolve by cumulative adaptation, is much more effective, in that there are often deep underlying reasons for precedents which may not be immediately apparent to a rationalistic mind. Your suggestion that culture is a function of intentions seems to me to assume a rational human power to shape institutions, based on the 18th century Enlightenment model. This discounting of external forces seems to conflict with the evidence of evolutionary theory.
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| RT: “However, this articulation of pride is an adaptive response, and can be analysed as a strategy of cultural evolution in a hostile environment.” DWill: Exactly. As you say here, the culture responds; it itself adopts a complex strategy as only humans could. There is certainly nothing like natural selection going on here (and I would also say that God is not controlling this). There is only a human product, culture, consisting of both the material and nonmaterial. To say that the culture responds to pressures, adapts, etc. is to say something true, but we shouldn't be fooled by the way this sounds--as if the agency is somehow external to the culture itself. It's all something that we do.DWill |
I am pleased to get this response as it opens up a theme in which I believe there is a widely held error. You are saying that human culture is not subject to the forces of natural evolution, where the implication of the work of Shubin, Dawkins and Darwin is that we are subject to these forces. I completely disagree with your comment that there is nothing like natural selection going on here. In the case of Australian or USA indigenous response to European invasion, my point is that some strategies are adaptive while others are not. Nihilistic despair is to my view a maladaptive strategy, while pride in culture mixed with integration of modern approaches is adaptive. You seem to be assuming the old Christian idea that there is a difference in kind between spirit and nature, with spirit somehow transcending the laws which govern nature. The essence of Dawkins’ use of zoology as the basis of philosophy is that this nature/spirit split is wrong.
Following Spinoza’s view that God is nature, I do think we can say nature is controlling what happens, as long as we extend our concept of nature to include human free will as a small determining factor. Culture is the agency, just in the same way procreation is the agency of natural selection. |
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President Camacho
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Joined: 12 Apr 2008
Posts: 250
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Location: Miami, Fl
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 7:59 pm Post subject:
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| That was awesome. |
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Saffron
Freshman
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Joined: 01 Apr 2008
Posts: 233
Gender: 
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 8:19 pm Post subject: I'm having an idea
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I think I've finally got an idea of how to have this discussion about cultural evolution. First, we need to make sure we are all talking the same language. Let's begin with laying out the definitions of the terms and concepts we are using.
Here is the wikipedia blurb for meme:
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| A meme (pronounced /miːm/[1]) consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways (my bold) resembles a gene. |
I think we need definitions for adaptation and evolution. Any others? After we get past the semantics, I'd like to do a little experiment. It goes like this: we (Robert?) work through an example of cultural evolution in the very same way that Neil Shubin has step by step described the evolution of the ear or eye or any other example from his book.
Ok, let the games begin!
Saffron |
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President Camacho
Sophomore
Joined: 12 Apr 2008
Posts: 250
Gender:
Location: Miami, Fl
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| Posted: Mon May 19, 2008 9:35 pm Post subject:
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Rob,
I'm having a hard time with something of my own... making it work in my head. I have a belief that all change is ultimately towards an equilibrium (nothing to do with equality). I can't accept forced changes that take away the freedoms of individuals and how they force someone to accept a current meme.
Like human rights. Is this an inevitable change? Something that doesn't need to be forced because we are heading in that direction anyway (towards the equilibrium)? It's too early to tell if we are heading in that direction, but hypothetically speaking, lets say we are. Then wouldn't the effort to force change be rather pointless on a large time scale? Especially considering the fact that it could be 'wrong'?
(I'm absolutely pro human rights - I just needed an example)
Is it that the culture was ready for it and there was finally some burst to make it happen? Like when most notable evolutionary changes occur in nature - it is rather spontaneous.
Maybe you can help me fill in the blanks... |
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Robert Tulip
Intern
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 197
Gender:
Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:13 am Post subject:
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| President Camacho wrote: |
| Rob, I'm having a hard time with something of my own... making it work in my head. I have a belief that all change is ultimately towards an equilibrium (nothing to do with equality). |
Camacho, reminds me of Comanche… I don’t see how all change is towards equilibrium. Rather, evolution produces increased complexity, until a periodic crisis of destruction after which a new ecosystem stabilises and evolves. Life is counter-entropic, so time moves in a sinusoidal way around equilibria, from highly evolved complex systems which can sit in equilibrium for long periods punctuated by asteroid impacts and other apocalypses.
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| I can't accept forced changes that take away the freedoms of individuals and how they force someone to accept a current meme. Like human rights. Is this an inevitable change? Something that doesn't need to be forced because we are heading in that direction anyway (towards the equilibrium)? |
PC, this is slightly confusing to me. Law is a forced meme, so your argument seems to imply an anarchistic opposition to property and stability. Are you arguing that views on human rights constitute a forced meme? This is true in so far as rights are upheld by law.
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| It's too early to tell if we are heading in that direction, but hypothetically speaking, lets say we are. Then wouldn't the effort to force change be rather pointless on a large time scale? Especially considering the fact that it could be 'wrong'? (I'm absolutely pro human rights - I just needed an example) |
Perhaps my last sentence missed your point, but could you please expand on this? Some efforts to force change will be in synch with the times and will work, whereas others will not.
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| Is it that the culture was ready for it and there was finally some burst to make it happen? Like when most notable evolutionary changes occur in nature - it is rather spontaneous. Maybe you can help me fill in the blanks... |
Stephen Jay Gould developed the evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibria, in which organisms and ecosystems are stable for aeons, with disasters creating new eras. We are currently in the fastest moment of evolutionary change since the extinction of the dinosaurs in 65 million BC, so I think you are right that large scale spontaneous bursts are inevitable. |
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Robert Tulip
Intern
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 197
Gender:
Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 8:33 am Post subject:
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| Saffron wrote: |
I think I've finally got an idea of how to have this discussion about cultural evolution. First, we need to make sure we are all talking the same language. Let's begin with laying out the definitions of the terms and concepts we are using. Here is the wikipedia blurb for meme:
| Quote: |
| A meme (pronounced /miːm/[1]) consists of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus. As a unit of cultural evolution, a meme in some ways (my bold) resembles a gene. |
I think we need definitions for adaptation and evolution. Any others? After we get past the semantics, I'd like to do a little experiment. It goes like this: we (Robert?) work through an example of cultural evolution in the very same way that Neil Shubin has step by step described the evolution of the ear or eye or any other example from his book. Ok, let the games begin! Saffron |
This is a great idea. Examples of cultural evolution can be found in medical technology, sport, war, music, agriculture, computing, the internet... There are also areas analogous to genetic drift, such as clothing fashion, where the criteria for adaptivity are far removed from any utility. Good background is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution |
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Saffron
Freshman
Book Discussion Leader
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
Posts: 233
Gender:
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:17 am Post subject:
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Adaptation from Wikipedia:
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| An adaptation is a positive characteristic of an organism that has been favored by natural selection and increases the fitness of its possessor.[1][2] Of course, an adaptation must have been adaptive at some point in an organism's evolutionary history, but such an organism's environment and ecological niche can change over time, leading to adaptations becoming redundant or even a hindrance (maladaptations). Such adaptations are termed vestigial. |
I hope no one minds the definitions being pulled from Wikipedia.
Evolution:
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| In biology, evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. The genes that are passed on to an organism's offspring produce the inherited traits that are the basis of evolution. Mutations in genes can produce new or altered traits in individuals, resulting in the appearance of heritable differences between organisms |
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Saffron
Freshman
Book Discussion Leader
Joined: 01 Apr 2008
Posts: 233
Gender:
Location: Northern Virginia
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:21 am Post subject:
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I think if we keep these quotes in mind when we are posting it would benefit all of us.
Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
--Albert Einstein
Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
--Werner Heisenberg |
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DWill
Freshman
Joined: 31 Jan 2008
Posts: 243
Gender:
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 9:47 pm Post subject:
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| Robert Tulip wrote: |
| Culture does in fact evolve by the Darwinian mechanism of cumulative adaptation. |
Robert, though I'm not setting myself up as as a Darwin expert, I do view myself as a strict constructionist where his theory is concerned. I would need to have a definition of "Darwinian cumulative adaptation," because right now I doubt that the first word belongs in the phrase for the context in which you want to use it. I also favor strongly Saffron's proposal to agree on terms, so that we are not using "adaptation," "evolution," and other words in their popular sense rather than the way I think the biologists understand them.
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| We do not decide which cultural forms will succeed – that would be like knowing how to write a number one pop song. Why certain memes ‘take off’ is often a mystery. Cultural changes do indeed “lie outside any intention by the organism”. |
Millions of people once liked disco music, to cite an unfortunate example. All those expressions of preference created the "successful" cultural phenomenon of disco. I can't detect Charles Darwin's presence here.
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| Your suggestion that culture is a function of intentions seems to me to assume a rational human power to shape institutions, based on the 18th century Enlightenment model. This discounting of external forces seems to conflict with the evidence of evolutionary theory. |
It's true that I grant us some ability to shape our institutions rationally. I don't think evolutionary theory (i.e.,Darwin) applies at all to culture, so I don't see a conflict.
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| I am pleased to get this response as it opens up a theme in which I believe there is a widely held error. You are saying that human culture is not subject to the forces of natural evolution, where the implication of the work of Shubin, Dawkins and Darwin is that we are subject to these forces. |
No, I'm saying that human culture is not subject to the law of "descent with modification through natural selection." It may seem to you to be merely a technical point, but I think it is important to say. I don't know about Dawkins, but where do Shubin and Darwin say that nature selects which format of videocassette will dominate, which writer will be held as the best in a language, or whether women will be required to wear burkas?
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| I completely disagree with your comment that there is nothing like natural selection going on here. In the case of Australian or USA indigenous response to European invasion, my point is that some strategies are adaptive while others are not. |
Don't you contradict yourself here? A strategy has to be in some way consciously chosen. It then couldn't be selected by nature. Not to sound like a broken record, but the fact that people adapt has nothing to do with how Darwin thought change in species came about.
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| You seem to be assuming the old Christian idea that there is a difference in kind between spirit and nature, with spirit somehow transcending the laws which govern nature. |
I might have given you this idea, but I don't hold any beliefs about spirit and no firm ones about nature. (And yet, I don't feel I have a nihilistic bone in my body.)
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| Following Spinoza’s view that God is nature, I do think we can say nature is controlling what happens, as long as we extend our concept of nature to include human free will as a small determining factor. Culture is the agency, just in the same way procreation is the agency of natural selection |
We have a basic difference here. I can't see at all that nature is controlling what happens in any culture-specific way. I would also enlarge the space you give to human free will in the pie chart.
Thanks, it's nice to be able to discuss these points with you.
DWill |
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Robert Tulip
Intern
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 197
Gender:
Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 5:48 am Post subject:
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| DWill wrote: |
| Robert Tulip wrote: |
| Culture does in fact evolve by the Darwinian mechanism of cumulative adaptation. |
Robert, though I'm not setting myself up as as a Darwin expert, I do view myself as a strict constructionist where his theory is concerned. I would need to have a definition of "Darwinian cumulative adaptation," because right now I doubt that the first word belongs in the phrase for the context in which you want to use it. I also favor strongly Saffron's proposal to agree on terms, so that we are not using "adaptation," "evolution," and other words in their popular sense rather than the way I think the biologists understand them. |
Darwinian thought is the antithesis of constructionism, which interprets all thought as artefact, rather than as reflection of reality. Cumulative adaptation is the essence of Darwinist thought. A review of Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker at http://www.geocities.com/a_and_e_uk/BlindWatch.htm?200822 states
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| “In Chapter 3 Dawkins starts to describe the processes involved in evolution. He shows, with the aid of computer programs, how cumulative adaptation vastly increases the probability of a structure developing. This is convincingly demonstrated by a computer which takes an input phrase, ‘mutates’ it and then selects the best mutant progeny to ‘breed’ the next generation of mutant phrases from it. In this case ‘best’ is defined as closest to the target – METHINKS IT IS A WEASEL. Impressively, the computer progresses from WDLMNLTDTJBKWIRZREZLMQOCOP to the endpoint in a mere 43 generations. The probability of this phrase spontaneously arising by a single-step mutation is a staggering 1 in 1039. … the point of it all – that evolution by small gradual steps is far more likely than evolution by large jumps. Using this thesis he then sets out to show that evolution of the eye is very simple to explain if you consider it in terms of small steps. ‘1% of vision is better then total blindness’ he notes. To further hammer the point home he takes a passage from Frank Hitching’s The Neck of a Giraffe: or Where Darwin Went Wrong, which claims that ‘the eye functions as a whole, or not at all’. Unfortunately for Hitching, not only are short-sighted people obviously better off than blind people, but there exists a squid-like creature called Nautilus, whose eyes do not have lenses. Dawkins is all too eager to point this out. Hitching’s book continues to provide Dawkins with opportunities to demonstrate his superior zoological knowledge, and Dawkins takes him to task with relish. In doing so, not only does he make Hitching look ridiculous but, by association, the idea that the eye could not have developed gradually is made to look ludicrous. |
Cumulative adaptation is a basic law of evolution. Things develop by building on precedent. I think this model applies well to cultural evolution.
You are right that the distinction between adaptation and evolution should be clearly defined. Perhaps I am saying that human adaptation to changing circumstances produced cultural change which operates on the same laws as evolution.
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| We do not decide which cultural forms will succeed – that would be like knowing how to write a number one pop song. Why certain memes ‘take off’ is often a mystery. Cultural changes do indeed “lie outside any intention by the organism”. |
Millions of people once liked disco music, to cite an unfortunate example. All those expressions of preference created the "successful" cultural phenomenon of disco. I can't detect Charles Darwin's presence here. |
Musical styles can be studied as examples of evolutionary selection. Disco did not spring forth uncaused, but emerged from gospel, pop and other genres as popular interests/needs evolved. For example, people wanted dance music, and disco applied a dance beat to existing styles. Where it is interesting is that some styles were found to be better for the niche (dancability) and so proved more popular. Being able to predict that a song would go to number one is a special skill that includes tapping in to a popular mood. Moods reflect societies’ needs, so we can see that music evolves to supply the demand. This economic law of supply and demand is also in accord with the theory of evolution – that free markets evolve (adapt?) by selecting and replicating the most successful approaches.
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| Your suggestion that culture is a function of intentions seems to me to assume a rational human power to shape institutions, based on the 18th century Enlightenment model. This discounting of external forces seems to conflict with the evidence of evolutionary theory. |
It's true that I grant us some ability to shape our institutions rationally. I don't think evolutionary theory (i.e.,Darwin) applies at all to culture, so I don't see a conflict. |
The fact that we have reason is an evolved trait of human beings. The question of which values are held, and with what relative power, is a response to external forces, as well as a construction. Your total scepticism here about applying evolution theory to culture is surprising to me.
Thank you for these responses. |
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