Beyond the Meme: Development and Structure in Cultural Evolution

by Alan C. Love (Editor), William Wimsatt (Editor)

Overview

Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time

How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. 

In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena.

Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes.

Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517906894
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	09/03/2019
Series:	Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science , #22
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Alan C. Love is professor of philosophy and director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota. 

William C. Wimsatt is Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Chicago, and Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts and professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He is author of Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Explaining Cultural Evolution: An Interdisciplinary Endeavor Alan C. Love William C. Wimsatt vii

1 Articulating Babel: A Conceptual Geography for Cultural Evolution William C. Wimsatt 1

2 Scientific Agency and Social Scaffolding in Contemporary Data-Intensive Biology Sabina Leonelli 42

3 Creating Cognitive-Cultural Scaffolding in Interdisciplinary Research Laboratories Nancy J. Nersessian 64

4 Arches and Scaffolds: Bridging Continuity and Discontinuity in Theory Change Michel Janssen 95

5 Promiscuous Inventions: Modeling Cultural Evolution with Multiple Inheritance Jacob G. Foster James A. Evans 200

6 Patented Technology as a Model System for Cultural Evolution Mark A. Bedau 237

7 Modeling the Coevolution of Religion and Coordination in Balinese Rice Farming Marshall Abrams 261

8 Content Matters: The Materiality of Cultural Transmission and the Intersection of Paleolithic Archaeology with Cultural Evolutionary Theory Gilbert B. Tostevin 311

9 The Evolution of Language as Technology: The Cultural Dimension Salikoko S. Mufwene 365

10 Writing in Early Mesopotamia: The Historical Interplay of Technology, Cognition, and Environment Massimo Maiocchi 395

11 Cultural Scaffolding and Technological Change: A Preliminary Framework Joseph D. Martin 425

12 The Evolution of the Social Self: Multidimensionality of Social Identity Solves the Coordination Problems of a Society Paul E. Smaldino 445

13 Wicked Systems and the Friction between "Old Theory and New Data" in Biology, Social Science, and Archaeology Claes Andersson Anton Törnberg Petter Törnberg 470

Contributors 499

Index 507

Editorial Reviews

"Beyond the Meme is a collection of thought-provoking essays dealing with the multifaceted complexity and wide diversity of cultural systems."—Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 

"An appreciation of how development and structure can be brought to bear on specific problems."—Evolutionary Studies 

From the Publisher