Light Will be Thrown: The Emerging Science of Cultural Evolution

Abstract

Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection processes in which information (whether genetic or cultural) is sieved, retained and then transmitted to the next generation. In both domains such a process will result in recognizable lineages and tree-like phylogenies so characteristic of Darwinian evolution. Because a principle of inheritance (i.e., faithful replication of information) holds in both domains, we may trace back particular transmission histories and identify the forces that influenced them. The idea that culture evolves is quite old, but only in recent years there has been a serious effort to turn this idea into science. This article offers a concise analysis of how a rudimentary idea gradually evolved into a thriving research program.