The Evolution of Cultural Entities

Michael Wheeler, John Ziman, Margaret A. Boden (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

234 Seiten

2002
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-726262-7 (ISBN)

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Since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws, firms, and theories seem to 'evolve' through sequences of variation, selection, and replication, in many ways just like living organisms. These essays consider whether modern evolutionary theory can help us to understand the dynamics of different cultural domains.

Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws, firms and theories seem to 'evolve' through sequences of variation, selection and replication, in many ways just like living organisms. These essays consider whether this comparison is 'just a metaphor', or whether modern evolutionary theory can help us to understand the dynamics of different cultural domains.

The 'evolutionary paradigm of rationality' has a significant role to play throughout the human sciences, but raises complex issues in every cultural context where it is applied. By fostering discussion between scholars from a wide range of research traditions, this volume aims to influence the evolution of all of them.

Introduction: Selectionist Reasoning as a Tool of Thought ; Heritable Variation and Competitive Selection as the Mechanism of Sociocultural Evolution ; Between Development and Evolution: How to Model Cultural Change ; Between Evolution and History: Biology, Culture and the Myth of Human Origins ; An Integrating Scaffold: Toward an Autonomy-Theoretic Modelling of Cultural Change ; Culture ; Learning from Culture ; Choosing the Selectors ; Evolutionary Theorizing in Economics ; The Evolution of Technological Knowledge: Reflections on Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process ; Idiosyncratic Production Regimes: Co-evolution of Economic and Legal Institutions in the Varieties of Capitalism ; The Evolution of Education: Change and Reform ; The Evolution of Merged Culture, Genes and Computing Artefacts

Erscheint lt. Verlag	3.10.2002
Reihe/Serie	Proceedings of the British Academy ; Vol. 112
Zusatzinfo	3 line drawings
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	162 x 244 mm
Gewicht	557 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Evolution
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-19-726262-7 / 0197262627
ISBN-13	978-0-19-726262-7 / 9780197262627
Zustand	Neuware