Hi! I'm Tim Tyler and this is a review of this book: Ever-Expanding Horizons: The Dual Informational Sources of Human Evolution by Carl P. Swanson.
The book says it its preface that is concerned with one question - namely: "What is the DNA of cultural evolution."
It gives its answer half way through the book - on page 87 - by saying:
A sociogene is defined here as a mental concept, a structured image, arising from one or more acts of experience, molded into shape and integrated with other sociogenes by the action of the central nervous system and from which information is extractable, expressible, and transmissible within the context of a social mileau.
"Sociogene" is a term that the author included in an earlier 1973 book - so it predates the term "meme".
The book dates from 1983 - so that's seven years after the selfish gene, two years after Lumsden and Wilson's Genes, Mind, And Culture book, two years after Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman's book Cultural Transmission and Evolution an d one year after The Extended Phenotype.
The author says that their book is based on reading an article written by V. Potter in 1964 called "Society and Science". He quotes from that article, saying:
the processes of natural selection and survival of ideas in cultural evolution are analogous to the natural selection and survival of DNA molecules in biological evolution, and that ideas are the key to understanding cultural evolution just as DNA molecules are the key to understanding biological evolution.
The author compares "sociogene" to the term "meme" and says that their meanings are similar. Today, the term "sociogene" as the author uses it would be described as being equivalent to an internalist conception of a meme. Sociogenes would today be called "neuromemes" by externalists.
Today on the internet references to the term "meme" outnumber references to the term "sociogene" by about 180,000 to 1. "Sociogene" was longer, mostly quite a bit later, and it wasn't attached to The Selfish Gene. As a result, it has practically gone extinct.
The term did have some advantages. "Sociogene" is pretty self-explanatory, while "meme" is not. The author contrasts sociogenes with biogenes - and this neatly and implicitly makes it clear that both are types of gene. The term "sociogene" allows terminology such as "sociophenotype" and "socioallele" to be used - while students of memetics can't adapt those two terms for the cultural realm quite so easily. Although I mostly approve of the idea of a "sociogene", the term biogene: that's the whole idea that DNA is biological and culture isn't, whereas if you actually think about it properly, culture is a biological phenomenon - so call calling DNA genes "biogenes" is just a bad way of thinking about things.
The book is mostly easy to read, fine and clear. It cites lots of literature - including the books I mentioned earlier - except for The Extended Phenotype. The author seems to have reasonable understanding of cultural evolution - though the book just looks at the issue of hereditity - and so many of the more common topics of cultural evolution are left unaddressed. Some parts of the book suffer from the flaw of being a bit boring. For example, the book goes on about the history of the universe and the mechanics of DNA copying for many pages - most readers will not be interested in such material.
The book takes a kind of internalist stance. Its unit of cultural heredity is defined as being inside a brain. The author never confronts the main challenge facing enthusiasts of internalism - which is what to with your conceptual framework once culture starts to be copied by machines. I guess computers were not considered to be so significant back in 1983.
The author uses his own "sociogenotype" term pretty sloppily - to refer to the culture of human individuals and of society. From a modern perspective, that looks as though he is using the term "genotype" to describe the heritable material of whole ecosystems, which seems a little confusing.
Some parts of the book have dated. For instance, the author says:
we know of no significant correlation between traits of known genetic origin and those of cultural derivation.
These days, that sounds odd. Most people in the field could probably come up with some examples of such traits pretty quickly.
To summarise, this is a nice book - though it seems likely that only those looking at a historical perspective are likely to seek it out.
Interesting news reports on new findings on the topic of the basis of long term memory. It finds that memories are stored in synapses by a self-copying prion-like protein.
A portion of the structure is self-complementary and—much like empty egg cartons—can easily stack up with other copies of itself. CPEB thus exists in neurons partly in the form of oligomers, which increase in number when neuronal synapses strengthen. These oligomers have a hardy resistance to ordinary solvents, and within neurons may be much more stable than single-copy "monomers" of CPEB. They also seem to actively sustain their population by serving as templates for the formation of new oligomers from free monomers in the vicinity.
Finding a form of molecular copying to be implicated in the basis of long-term memory is no surprise - but it is an interesting and important finding, and it looks as though it may help to illuminate the nature of some of the low-level Darwinian processes that go on in the brain.
Darwinism is getting everywhere these days. I had a look at quantum Darwinism recently. My analysis:
In quantum physics, wavefunctions are constantly being copied with variation. Quantum Darwinism essentially proposes that wavefunction collapse represents a form of selection - and that the resulting evolution of the observed universe thus has a Darwinian character.
Quantum Darwinism has been developed mainly by Wojciech Zurek (pictured on the right). It is described in more detail here and here.
Quantum Darwinism appears to be fairly heavily dependent on wavefunction collapse. Wavefunction collapse is a controversial process. So far, no real evidence has been found favouring the idea. It looks like a bunch of made-up nonsense - as was pointed out by Hugh Everett and his Many-worlds interpretation.
Zurek apparently largely rejects many worlds = writing:
There are two key ideas in Everett's writings. The first one is to let quantum theory dictate its own interpretation. We took this "let quantum be quantum" point very seriously. The second message (that often dominates in popular accounts) is the Many Worlds mythology. In contrast "let quantum be quantum" it is less clear what it means, so - in the opinion of this author - there is less reason to take it at face value.
Can quantum Darwinism work without wavefunction collapse? The problem is that there's then no equivalent to death or resource limitation. However, there is still differential reproductive success.
Can one have Darwinism without death? There is still heredity, variation and differential reproductive success. That does tick most of the boxes of Darwinism.
I think it has to be conceded that quantum Darwinism is reasonably accurately named. Whether a Darwinian perspective tells us anything that we didn't already know in this case seems more debatable, though. It may not make a difference to predictions - but it might have an impact on visualisations of the process.
Of course, if the "many-worlds interpretation" ever collapses - so to speak - quantum Darwinism might become a lot more interesting.
Ingold has some specific criticisims - among them:
Secondly, there is the question of what actually evolves. For ‘evolutionary biology’ it is normally taken to be the so-called genotype. Does there, then, exist some cultural analogue of the genotype? Opinion on the matter is divided even among ‘evolutionary biologists’ themselves, as Robert Aunger testifies in his comment
Yes: the cultural genotype is the memotype. It is rather less clearly delimited than in the organic realm, since cultural creatures are sometimes less clearly delimited than organic ones are. However organic organisms do not always have clear boundaries either - for example, consider ants or the Portuguese Man o'War.
the very assumption that information is pre-encoded, in genes or culture, prior to its phenotypic expression in the forms and behaviour of the individuals who carry it, implies that there exists some ‘reading’ of the genetic or cultural ‘code’ that is independent of the social and environmental contexts in which those individuals grow up and live their lives.
Not really. English is a memetic code that maps from memes to meme products. However: is English "independent of the social and environmental contexts in which those individuals grow up and live their lives"? Not really - there are also French and Spanish speakers and English is constantly being modified by those who speak it. This just seems to be a misunderstanding.
Are we to understand that cultural information is transmitted, from head to head, independently and in advance of its expression?
That depends a bit on what you mean. A recipe can be transmitted from head to head without ever going through its main meme expression process - namely baking a cake. However, there's a sense in which behavioral imitation involves at least some meme expression processes - involving creating behavior and then observing it and reconstructing corresponding motor actions. However, it is rare for culture to be copied independently of its expression.
How can a theory of cultural evolution, modelled on the principles of ‘evolutionary biology’, be other than completely circular? Following in the footsteps of other neo-Darwinian culture theorists, Mesoudi et al. define culture as transmitted information (ideas, knowledge, beliefs, values, skills, attitudes) that affects the behaviour of individuals. They then go on to announce that there is ‘ample evidence that culture plays a powerful role in determining human behaviour and cognition’ (331). Culture is anything that determines what humans think and do, ergo what humans think and do is determined by culture!
That argument just doesn't seem to make any sense at all. Culture is NOT defined as being "anything that determines what humans think and do" by Mesoudi et al. - they also permit non-social learning and genetics to influence human behaviour. Tim continues with:
Nor is this circularity limited to neo-Darwinian reasoning about culture. The same goes for its thinking about genes. To establish the genotype of an organism, ‘evolutionary biology’ works backwards from its outward, phenotypic form and behaviour by factoring out variation due to environmental experience so as to arrive at a context-independent description, only to declare that its form and behaviour are expressions, within a particular environmental context, of an evolved genotype. The concept of ‘trait’, whether applied to genetic or cultural characters, at once embodies and conceals this circularity.
WTF? I don't think Tim Ingold knows what he is talking about! This is what an anthropologist criticising evolutionary biology looks like? I think Tim should stick to subjects he knows something about.
Medoudi et al. offer their responses to all this here. They describe Ingold's article as containing "unhelpful misrepresentation and scaremongering".
This podcast is pretty boring. Memes start in part 2. Ingold has the idea that evolutionary biology needs to be combined with developmental systems theory - and various other things - in order to create a viable theory.
The main problem with that is that we already have a perfectly good, highly viable theory that is spending far too much time sitting around not being applied.
The current situation is that immense retardation in the social sciences is occurring - through the lack of a Darwinian theory of cultural change.
Scientists should probably roll out the current best shot at a Darwinian theory of culture across the social sciences fairly soon. I mean, 150 years of pre-Darwinian thinking in the social sciences is enough - right? The social sciences should at least get onto the Darwinian bandwagon. Some of the more esoteric aspects of evolutionary theory can be postponed - if it actually helps with that basic mission.
Tim Ingold doesn't seem to me to be part of the solution. Maybe he has a revolutionary unified theory of biology up his sleeve, but from what I can see, it doesn't look like it, and nobody should delay rolling out Darwinian culture theories on his behalf. This makes Tim part of the problem.
The other thing to say is that, in my experience, most people who claim that developmental systems theory is important to integrate into evolutionary biology often have a poor understanding of how useful evolutionary biology can be with no modeling of developmental processes at all. Evolutionary biology kind of has a "slot" into which theories of development can be fitted. A lack of knowledge of development thus has very little impact on progress in evolutionary theory. Population genetics is the same. We can do meme frequency analysis just fine without understanding development at all.
The fallacy of Dennett's argument also undermines his other imperialist hope--that the universal acid of natural selection might reduce human cultural change to the Darwinian algorithm as well. Dennett, following Dawkins once again, tries to identify human thoughts and actions as "memes," thus viewing them as units that are subject to a form of selection analagous to natural selection of genes. Cultural change, working by memetic selection, then becomes as algorithmic as biological change operating by natural selection on genes--thus uniting the evolution of organisms and thoughts under a single ultra-Darwinian rubric:
According to Darwin's dangerous idea...not only all your children and your children's children, but all your brainchildren and your brainchildren's brainchildren must grow from the common stock of Design elements, genes and memes.... Life and all its glories are thus united under a single perspective.
But, as Dennett himself correctly and repeatedly emphasizes, the generality of an algorithm depends upon "substrate neutrality." That is, the various materials (substrates) subject to the mechanism (natural selection in this case) must all permit the mechanism to work in the same effective manner. If one kind of substrate tweaks the mechanism to operate differently (or, even worse, not to work at all), then the algorithm fails. To choose a somewhat silly example that actually played an important role in recent American foreign policy, the cold war "domino theory" held that communism must be stopped everywhere because if one country turned red, then others would do so as well, for countries are like dominos standing on their ends and placed one behind the other--so that the toppling of one must propagate down the entire line to topple all. Now if you devised a general formula (an algorithm) to describe the necessary propagation of such toppling, and wanted to cite the algorithm as a general rule for all systems made of a series of separate objects, then the generality of your algorithm would depend upon substrate neutrality--that is, upon the algorithm's common working, regardless of substrate (similarly for dominos and nations in this case). The domino theory failed because differences in substrate affect the outcome, and such differences can even derail the operation of the algorithm. Dominoes must topple, but the second nation in a line might brace itself, stay upright upon impact, and therefore fail to propagate the collapse.
Natural selection does not enjoy this necessary substrate neutrality. As the great evolutionist R.A. Fisher showed many years ago in the founding document of modern Darwinism (The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, l930), natural selection requires Mendelian inheritance to be effective. Genetic evolution works upon such a substrate and can therefore be Darwinian. Cultural (or memetic) change manifestly operates on the radically different substrate of Lamarckian inheritance, or the passage of acquired characters to subsequent generations. Whatever we invent in our lifetimes, we can pass on to our children by our writing and teaching. Evolutionists have long understood that Darwinism cannot operate effectively in systems of Lamarckian inheritance--for Lamarckian change has such a clear direction, and permits evolution to proceed so rapidly, that the much slower process of natural selection shrinks to insignificance before the Lamarckian juggernaut.
From "Bully for Brontosauraus":
I am convinced that comparisons between biological evolution and human cultural or technological change have done vastly more harm than good — and examples abound of this most common of all intellectual traps. Biological evolution is a bad analogue for cultural change because the two are different for three major reasons that could hardly be more fundamental.
First, cultural evolution can be faster by orders of magnitude than biological change at its maximal Darwinian rate — and questions of timing are of the essence in evolutionary arguments.
Second, cultural evolution is direct and Lamarckian in form: [t]he achievements of one generation are passed directly to descendants, thus producing the great potential speed of cultural change. Biological evolution is indirect and Darwinian, as favorable traits do not descend to the next generation unless, by good fortune, they arise as products of genetic change.
Third, the basic topologies of biological and cultural change are completely different. Biological evolution is a system of constant divergence without subsequent joining of branches. In human history, transmission across lineages is, perhaps, the major source of cultural change.
From "Life's Grandeur" page 219:
In this sense, I deeply regret that common usage refers to the history of our artifacts and social organizations as “cultural evolution.” Using the same term - evolution - for both natural and cultural history obfuscates far more than it enlightens. ... Why not speak of something more neutral and descriptive — ‘cultural change,’ for example?”
...
But cultural change, on a radical other hand, is potentially Lamarckian in basic mechanism. Any cultural knowledge acquired in one generation can be directly passed to the next by what we call, in a most noble word, education.
...
This uniquely and distinctively Lamarckian style of human cultural inheritance gives our technological history a directional and cumulative character that no natural Darwinian evolution can possess.
...
human cultural change is an entirely distinct process operating under radically different principles that do allow for the strong possibility of a driven trend to what we may legitimately call “progress”
...
The common designation of “evolution” then leads to one of the most frequent and portentous errors in our analysis of human life and history – the overly reductionist assumption that the Darwinian natural paradigm will fully encompass our social and technological history as well.
...
Biological evolution is powered by natural selection, cultural evolution by a different set of principles that I understand but dimly.
Gould said in a 1996 radio interview with Susan Blackmore:
Hi. I'm Tim Tyler - and this is a review of this book: The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection, by Walter G. Runciman.
The book is essentially sociology with memes. The main topic is sociology, but the terminology and explanatory framework used by the book is based on memetics.
The book covers religious and political topics. It deals with feuds, rituals, slavery, Marxism and marriage customs. It discusses stasis, group selection, convergence and the goal-directedness of social change. There are sections about the role of Darwinism in social science, resistance to Darwinism and the history of the field.
To the extent that the book has a main theme, it's that natural selection and cultural selection need extending to social selection. In the book natural selection is based on genes, cultural selection is based on memes and social selection is based on practices. Genetic traits are evoked, memetic traits are acquired and social practices are imposed. Cultural selection and social selection are said to not be reducible to natural selection.
There is a kind of case to be made along these lines. A lot of the work on the topic has been done by people interested in microevolutionary phenomena and population genetics. For them small-scale cultural phenomena are more immediate and accessible than society and history are - and they can be more easily explored experimentally. As a result, there's a bit of a bias towards psychology - and away from sociology, history and the world of cultural macroevolution. It is easy to imagine how sociologists might feel that their field is being unfairly neglected by selectionist theorists.
However, it seems to me that Runciman pushes this case to unrealistic extremes. His rejection of the term "socio-cultural evolution" seems to be unreasonable to me. I don't like his proposed terminology for social evolution either. What he calls "practices" I just call "memes" - the same term as is used for the units of cultural evolution. Using a different term makes very little sense. The author's "meme-practice evolution" terminology seems almost as bad as the "gene-culture evolution" terminology - both represent an inappropriate muddling together of different types of category.
The relationship between social evolution and small scale cultural phenomena is a lot like the relationship between micro- and macro-evolution. Macro-evolution is essentially made up of many micro-evolutionary phenonmena. It is true that there are emergent phenomena that come from considering things at a different scale. It is also true that group selection might potentially introduce new effects at the larger scale. However, group selection still seems to be relatively insignificant - and macroevolution is largely microevolution writ large.
The author mentions multi-level selection in the context of his framework. He discusses cultural group selection - and briefly attempts to sketch a case for it. However, he doesn't seem to present social selection as a synonym for cultural group selection. Group selection - if significant enough - would provide a theoretical basis for the type of split the author is going for. However, it hardly presents sociology with a firm foundation. Without being based on group selection, social selection seems to be pretty similar to cultural selection, and the emphatic split between them advocated by the author doesn't really seem to be warranted.
Next: memes. The book is saturated with memes. They are mentioned on almost every page. Runciman produces what seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable rationale for using the memetics terminology, and then views sociology with meme-tinted spectables. It would have been better if he had used it to describe social selection too. However, I think that Runciman should be praised and congratulated for adopting memes.
I can't easily review most of the sociology in the book - but I can review its memetics. The memetics in the book seems to be pretty basic. Runciman has deleterious memes, but there seems to be no the meme's eye view, or meme recombination. There's a discussion of memes as symbionts, but it draws what I think is the wrong conclusion. Runciman identifies the "viral" aspect of memetics, but then criticises it for falsely implying that memes are deleterious. He also criticises it by saying that viruses are transmitted by a single exposure, while memes may require multiple exposures that act to reinforce each other. These criticisms don't apply to other kinds of organic symbiosis, though. For example, when a lone sheep tastes a pleasing mushroom it might require multiple exposures before is acquires a taste for them and starts to actively seek them out and distrubute mushroom spores in its feces. Taking multiple exposures before a relationship with a symbiont is established is pretty common for food symbionts - and it has nothing specifically to do with cultural evolution, and so does not represent much of a disanalogy between the cultural and organic realms.
Runciman goes on to give some examples of where he thinks that the symbiosis perspective fails. The first example he gives does exhibit the logistic growth curve found in epidemiology - but Runciman says it more closely resembles detoxification that an infection. Through the lens of symbiosis, his example looks more like a case of disinfection. It is actually an example of disinfection by one cultural symbiont caused by infection with another one. There are similar phenomena in the organic realm - such as when bacteria in a pro-biotic yogurt is used to displace rogue gut bacteria. The second example describes a case where one group fails to acquire a contagion from another group - and Runciman claims that an "infection" theory would have predicted greater spread. However, there are phenomena such as adaptive and genetic immunitity to consider. The failure of some particular germ to spread doesn't invalidate the whole theory of germs. Reasoning in this way, Runciman fails to adopt the symboisis perspective and doesn't mention parasitism, mutualism or symbiosis for the rest of the book. This is a pretty central part of memetics and is one of the main things that distinguishes it from other theories of cultural evolution.
However, for most of his applications, Runciman doesn't really need an advanced version of memetics with recombination and symbiosis. He can get by with a version based on bean-bag genetics - and that's exactly what he does.
Runciman's discussion of progress is acceptable. He at least acknowledges the phenomenon.
For me the main problem with the book was that it was dry and not very well written. Runciman writes in a rather flowery style that dances around the point with digressions and only rarely seems to get down to the meat. The book is broken up into chapters and numbered subsections. This layout doesn't really help readers who wants to skim read or flick through the book to find things of interest to them. There is only one diagram. Alas, I was rather glad when the book was over.
Unfortunately, this is not a great book. However, Runciman is one of the few sociologists who has actually got as far as adopting a selectionist perspective - and so other sociologists who might want to follow him don't have a lot of similar reading material to choose from - and so some may find something of value here. Those more interested in an evolutionary perspective probably won't find the book so useful. This is really much more a sociology book than the title might suggest.
What's wrong with the concept of indirect reciprocity?
I think it mixes two very different things together.
One is where a positive reputation results in cooperation - A is nice to B and then C is nice to A.
The other is where generosity is misplaced - A is nice to B and then B is nice to C.
The first is rational, the second is normally irrational - and is typically down to resource-limited cognition.
Indirect reciprocity is also a bit of an oxymoron. The word "reciprocity" doesn't really apply to indirect situations unless the benefits are eventually returned to from whence they came.
It is much better to put these two types of interactions in different categories. That's what I do - with the concepts of virtue signalling and overgeneralisation.
Nowak achieved some not-so-desirable publicity recently with his role in the "Kin Selection debacle" in Nature.
Nowak discusses cultural evolution near the start of the first video, but - as with most writers on the subject of cooperation - Nowak seems to be more interested in game theory than symbiosis and cultural evolution.
Interesting news reports on new findings on the topic of the basis of long term memory. It finds that memories are stored in synapses by a self-copying prion-like protein.
Darwinism is getting everywhere these days. I had a look at 
Tim Ingold is a meme critic. In fact he seems to be a critic of most kinds of Darwinian cultural evolution.
Stephen J. Gould really didn't like the concept of Darwinian cultural evolution.
My list of reasons 
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