Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Introduction
Summary
References
All Topics
History
Historiography

Selection and Increasing Complexity in Evolution

Profile image of Börje EkstigBörje Ekstig

2024, Journal of big history

https://doi.org/10.22339/JBH.V7I2.7207
visibility

…

description

14 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of complexity in the evolution of life and human culture, proposing that the overarching increase in complexity is driven by the fundamental mechanism of selection. From the origin of life to contemporary human culture, selection plays a pivotal role in favoring complexity in reproductive processes and cultural expressions. The paper distinguishes two main phases of life on Earth: the emergence and evolution of life and animals, and the subsequent emergence of the human species with its complex cultural expressions. Despite apparent differences, both phases are argued to be guided by the same fundamental mechanism-selection, taking various forms such as adaptive natural selection, nonadaptive selection, sexual selection, and memetic selection. The paper identifies the acquisition of language as a crucial development, influenced by imitation and sexual selection, and suggests that the strong selective pressure for language has driven the rapid growth of the human brain and intelligence. This enhanced intelligence, in turn, has played a pivotal role in cultural, scientific, and technological achievements marked by unprecedented levels of complexity. The role of memetic selection is explored in the dissemination of religion across human societies, and the unintended consequences of Martin Luther' s introduction of literacy and schooling for Western culture are examined. By integrating evolutionary principles with cultural and linguistic insights, this paper offers a comprehensive perspective on the unifying force of selection in the evolution of complexity in life and human culture.

Related papers

The Evolution of Cultural Complexity: Not by the Treadmill Alone
Dwight Read

2016

Among the drivers and constraints on the evolution of complex hominin culture that have been proposed throughout the years, demographic factors have been particularly persistent, and they have recently again come to gain traction in the literature in the shape of the so-called treadmill model. The treadmill model connects cultural complexity to group size via a need to constantly “outrun a treadmill of cultural loss,” whose backward motion is caused by errors in culture transmission. The entrenchment of the treadmill explanation of cultural complexity, however, takes place against a background of critiques of the model and the presence of other explanatory propositions. This creates a need for deentrenchment: wider integration, elaboration, and critique of the premises of the treadmill model and the evidence advanced to validate it. We begin by reviewing the treadmill model, making an assessment of its current status, and then moving on to a more synthetic proposition by placing the model into the context of other models addressing the elaboration of cultural complexity. We end by considering the broader implications for the study of the evolution of culture and of human behavior to be gained from more integrated modeling of the various factors affecting cultural complexity.

View PDFchevron_right
Franz M. Wuketits and Christoph Antweiler, Handbook of Evolution, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Human Societies and Cultures (Weinheim Germany: Wiley-VCH Publishers, 2004), 341. ISBN 3-527-30839-3. Hardcover, $179.00, US $245.00
Frank Salter

Politics and the Life Sciences, 2010

View PDFchevron_right
Handbook of Evolution, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Human Societies and Cultures Franz M. Wuketits , Christoph Antweiler . Handbook of Evolution, Vol. 1: The Evolution of Human Societies and Cultures Weinheim, Germany. Wiley-VCH Publishers. 2004. 341. ISBN 3-527-30839-3. Hardcover, €179.00, US $245.00
Frank Salter

Politics and the Life Sciences, 2010

View PDFchevron_right
Complexity and technological evolution: What everybody knows?
Wybo Houkes

Biology & philosophy, 2017

The consensus among cultural evolutionists seems to be that human cultural evolution is cumulative, which is commonly understood in the specific sense that cultural traits, especially technological traits, increase in complexity over generations. Here we argue that there is insufficient credible evidence in favor of or against this technological complexity thesis. For one thing, the few datasets that are available hardly constitute a representative sample. For another, they substantiate very specific, and usually different versions of the complexity thesis or, even worse, do not point to complexity increases. We highlight the problems our findings raise for current work in cultural-evolutionary theory, and present various suggestions for future research.

View PDFchevron_right
What Can Social Complexity Teach Us about Cultural Evolution?
Dries Daems

2019

In reality, very few adhere to either position strictly. Instead, theorists fall along a spectrum, approaching one position or the other to different degrees. Those falling closest to the sociobiological position include E.O. Wilson (in both his classic work Sociobiology [79] and his more recent Genesis [80]) as well as those thinkers associated with “high church evolutionary psychology” ([4], [51]). Theorists falling closest to the center constitute the so-called “California School,” which tends to emphasize a bidirectional process of gene-culture coevolution and

View PDFchevron_right
Three Evolutionary Pieces: Review Essays on the Origins and Evolution of Culture
Bill Benzon

This document collects three previously published essay reviews that discuss five books: Steven Mithen, The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body (2005). James L. Pearson, Shamanism and the Ancient Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Archaeology (2002). David Sloan Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002). Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (2005). Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson, eds. The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (2005). Taken together they cover music, drawing and painting (on rock), and literature and cover periods from human pre-history, through the emergence of modern man, to contemporary culture and society.sha

View PDFchevron_right
Bintliff (Ed.) (1999) Structure and contingency: evolutionary processes in life and human society
John Bintliff

1999

View PDFchevron_right
A Note on Why Natural Selection Leads to Complexity
Bill Benzon

Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 1990

While science has accepted biological evolution through natural selection, there is no generally agreed explanation for why evolution leads to ever more complex organisms. Evolution yields organismic complexity because the universe is, in its very fabric, inherently complex, as suggested by Ilya Prigogine's work on dissipative structures. Because the universe is complex, increments in organismic complexity yield survival benefits: (1) more efficient extraction of energy and matter, (2) more flexible response to vicissitudes, (3) more effective search. J.J. Gibson's ecological psychology provides a clue to the advantages of sophisticated information processing while the lore of computational theory suggests that a complex computer is needed efficiently to perform complex computations (i.e. sophisticated information processing).

View PDFchevron_right
Underappreciated features of cultural evolution
Wybo Houkes

2020

Cultural evolution theory has long been inspired by evolutionary biology. Conceptual analogies between biological and cultural evolution have led to the adoption of a range of formal theoretical approaches from population dynamics and genetics. However, this has resulted in a research programme with a strong focus on cultural transmission. Here, we contrast biological with cultural evolution, and highlight aspects of cultural evolution that have not received sufficient attention previously. We outline possible implications for evolutionary dynamics and argue that not taking them into account will limit our understanding of cultural systems. We propose twelve key questions for future research, among which are calls to improve our understanding of the combinatorial properties of cultural innovation, and the role of development and life history in cultural dynamics. Finally, we discuss how this vibrant research field can make progress by embracing its multidisciplinary nature.

View PDFchevron_right
Extracted from: EVOLUTION AND CULTURE: THE MISSING LINK
Robin Allott

The relation of evolution and culture has been much debated. There have been many different approaches, of which the most notable have been those of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, Lumsden and Wilson, and Boyd and Richerson. Also noteworthy are the views of Durham and Hinde and most recently of the evolutionary psychologists. If these other accounts, or any one of them, seems to cover the subject adequately and to be intellectually satisfying, no new approach would be needed. The first step then is to summarize and assess the theories that have been presented.

View PDFchevron_right

References (28)

  1. Blackmore, S. (1999). The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press.
  2. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray.
  3. Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press.
  4. Dawkins, R. (1988). The Blind Watchmaker. Penguin Books.
  5. Dawkins, R. (2004). The Ancestor's Tale. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
  6. Deacon, T. (1997). The Symbolic Species. W. W. Norton & Co. Dennett, D. C. (1995). Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster.
  7. Descartes, R. (1647). The Description of the Human Body. http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/mo dern/descartes/body/body.ht.
  8. Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton & Co.
  9. Ebert, T. (2009). Der rätselhafte Tod des René Descartes. Alibri Verlag.
  10. Ekstig, B. (2019). Mechanisms of Evolution. Nova Science Publishers.
  11. Gregory, T. R. (2008). The Evolution of Complex Organs. Evo Edu Outreach, 1, 358 -389. doi: 10.1007/s12052- 008-0076-1.
  12. Henrich, J. (2021). The Weirdest People in the World. Penguin Books.
  13. Jantsch, E. (1980). The Self-organizing Universe. Pergamon Press.
  14. Kateb, G. (2011). Human Dignity. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  15. Kuhl, P. K. (2015). Baby Talk. Scientific American, November 2015, 313, 64-69.
  16. Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Evolution. The University of Chicago Press.
  17. Kuijper, B., Pen, I., & Weissing, F. J. (2012). A Guide to Sexual Selection Theory. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst., 43, 287-311.
  18. Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin Books Ltd.
  19. Lineweaver, C. H., Davies, P., & Ruse, M. (Eds.). (2013). Complexity and the Arrow of Time. Cambridge University Press.
  20. Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (2017). Order Out of Chaos. Verso.
  21. Prum, R. O. (2018). The Evolution of Beauty. Anchor Books.
  22. Ruse, M. (1996). Monad to Man. Harvard University Press.
  23. Schrödinger, E. (1944). What is Life?. Cambridge University Press.
  24. Shea, John J. (2017). Stone Tools in Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
  25. Stearns, S.C. (1992). The Evolution of Life Histories. Oxford University Press.
  26. Walker, S. I., Packard, N., & Cody, G. D. (2017). Re- conceptualizing the origins of life. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 375(2109), 20160337. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC56863
  27. / Wilson, E. O. (1980). Sociobiology. The Belknap Press.
  28. Wilson, E. O. (1992). The Diversity of Life. Penguin Books. We operate under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Related papers

Complexity, Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life and Humans
Börje Ekstig

Foundations of Science, 2014

In this paper, I discuss the concept of complexity. I show that the principle of natural selection as acting on complexity gives a solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly contradictory notion of generally increasing complexity and the observation that most species don't follow such a trend. I suggest the process of evolution to be illustrated by means of a schematic diagram of complexity versus time, interpreted as a form of the Tree of Life. The suggested model implies that complexity is cumulatively increasing, giving evolution a direction, an arrow of time, thus also implying that the latest emerging species will be the one with the highest level of complexity. Since the human species is the last species evolved in the evolutionary process seen at large, this means that we are the species with the highest complexity. The model implies that the human species constitutes an integral part of organic evolution, yet rendering us the exclusive status as the species of the highest complexity.

View PDFchevron_right
Culture, humanities, evolution: the complexity of meaning-making over time
Joep Leerssen

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 2021

One contribution of 15 to a theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'. This article outlines how the historical human sciences see 'culture' and its dynamic developments over time and over generations. The operations of human culture are systemically self-reflexive and, as a result, exhibit a complexity that sets them apart, as a semiotic system, from mere communicative information transfer. Peculiar to this complexity is the two-way interaction between the 'etic' substance of the cultural exchanges and their 'emic' function. Cultural signals require parallel etic/emic processing at stacked levels of complexity. As a result of this complexity, the homeostasis and autopoiesis of human culture, including its dynamics and development over time, cannot be explained fully in terms of responses to the physical environment. How, this article ponders by way of conclusion, can an evolutionary approach be reconciled with these characteristics of human culture, or the notion of culture be applied to evolutionary modelling? This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.

View PDFchevron_right
Cultural complexity and complexity evolution
Dwight Read

Adaptive Behavior, 2019

We review issues stemming from current models regarding the drivers of cultural complexity and cultural evolution. We disagree with the implication of the treadmill model, based on dual-inheritance theory, that population size is the driver of cultural complexity. The treadmill model reduces the evolution of artifact complexity, measured by the number of parts, to the statistical fact that individuals with high skills are more likely to be found in a larger population than in a smaller population. However, for the treadmill model to operate as claimed, implausibly high skill levels must be assumed. Contrary to the treadmill model, the risk hypothesis for the complexity of artifacts relates the number of parts to increased functional efficiency of implements. Empirically, all data on hunter-gatherer artifact complexity support the risk hypothesis and reject the treadmill model. Still, there are conditions under which increased technological complexity relates to increased population size, but the dependency does not occur in the manner expressed in the treadmill model. Instead, it relates to population size when the support system for the technology requires a large population size. If anything, anthropology and ecology suggest that cultural complexity generates high population density rather than the other way around.

View PDFchevron_right
The revolution that still isn't: The origins of behavioral complexity in Homo sapiens
Manuel Will

Journal of Human Evolution, 2023

The behavioral origins of Homo sapiens can be traced back to the first material culture produced by our species in Africa, the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Beyond this broad consensus, the origins, patterns, and causes of behavioral complexity in modern humans remain debated. Here, we consider whether recent findings continue to support popular scenarios of: (1) a modern human 'package,' (2) a gradual and 'pan-African' emergence of behavioral complexity, and (3) a direct connection to changes in the human brain. Our geographically structured review shows that decades of scientific research have continuously failed to find a discrete threshold for a complete 'modernity package' and that the concept is theoretically obsolete. Instead of a continent-wide, gradual accumulation of complex material culture, the record exhibits a predominantly asynchronous presence and duration of many innovations across different regions of Africa. The emerging pattern of behavioral complexity from the MSA conforms to an intricate mosaic characterized by spatially discrete, temporally variable, and historically contingent trajectories. This archaeological record bears no direct relation to a simplistic shift in the human brain but rather reflects similar cognitive capacities that are variably manifested. The interaction of multiple causal factors constitutes the most parsimonious explanation driving the variable expression of complex behaviors, with demographic processes such as population structure, size, and connectivity playing a key role. While much emphasis has been given to innovation and variability in the MSA record, long periods of stasis and a lack of cumulative developments argue further against a strictly gradualistic nature in the record. Instead, we are confronted with humanity's deep, variegated roots in Africa, and a dynamic metapopulation that took many millennia to reach the critical mass capable of producing the ratchet effect commonly used to define contemporary human culture. Finally, we note a weakening link between 'modern' human biology and behavior from around 300 ka ago.

View PDFchevron_right
Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture and the Study of Religion by Radek Kundt_Book review for Journal of Cognitive Historiography
Peter Maňo

Radek Kundt, Contemporary Evolutionary eories of Culture and the Study of Religion (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic), 192 pp., 2018

For decades, natural scientists have been successfully using Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to explain various biological phenomena. The success of the theory in its modern form (neo-Darwinism) lies in its theoretical precision and clear criteria defining the evolutionary process. Recognizing the explanatory and predictive potential of Darwin's theory, scholars of religion and culture have reached out to it in their attempt to understand cultural processes. In Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture and the Study of Religion, Radek Kundt scrutinizes evolutionary approaches in religious studies and examines how well they meet the stringent criteria of the modern theory of evolution

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Big History
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved