If cultural evolution is Darwinian, why is it faster?

Massimo Pigliucci recently wrote:

The conclusion that biological and cultural evolution are different also nicely accounts for the fact that cultural evolution is so much more dynamic (it happens much faster) and unpredictable than its biological counterpart. If we think of both as instances of Darwinism that difference becomes more puzzling.

Cultural evolution is indeed a new kind of evolution. However, most modern accounts of the process by scientists working on cultural evolution still classify it as being Darwinian.

The reasons include the fact that Darwin himself recognized cultural evolution - and said that natural selection applied to it - by saying:

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

More specifically, cultural evolution exhibits reproduction, variation, selection and cumulative adaptive evolution - the key hallmarks of Darwinian evolution - according to many authors writing on the topic since the 1970s.

How then are we to account for the recent explosion of evolutionary activity? The skyscrapers, satellites and microprocessors that have suddenly materialised?

I think that the tower of optimisation concept is a useful way of thinking about what is going on. This illustrates the evolution of evolvability - charting evolutionary progress through sex, learning, culture - and towards engineering. Evolution is constantly expanding its the "natural technology" it has accumulated - the know-how like photosynthesis and cellulose that allows more niches to be occupied. Engineering and intelligent design are just the latest additions to a toolbox with a long history - going back into geological time. Nature adding more tools to an existing toolbox which already contains many tools doesn't suddenly stop the evolutionary process from being Darwinian. If you think it does, I recommend reconsidering your classification scheme.

In many respects, the whole issue boils down to whether we should give credit to Darwin for discovering the combined significance of the concepts of reproduction, variation, selection and cumulative adaptive evolution. I think that we should. Evolutionary theory was Darwin's baby. He understood the broad applicability of his idea - including its applicability to human culture. His understanding of evolution was better than that of many evolutionists today, particularly those who - like Massimo and Pinker - are still having a hard time swallowing the concept of cultural evolution.

Charles Darwin on cultural evolution

Darwin himself understood that culture evolves - writing in 1871:

The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

The passage this quote comes from is of historical interest. Here it is in full:

The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. But we can trace the formation of many words further back than that of species, for we can perceive how they actually arose from the imitation of various sounds. We find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of formation. The manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. We have in both cases the re-duplication of parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth. The frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter m in the word am, means I; so that in the expression I am, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. In the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation. Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birth-places. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller has well remarked:- "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.