Why Culture Isn’t Darwinian (and it’s Misleading Even to Say “Not Strictly Darwinian”)

Culture evolves; i.e., exhibits cumulative, adaptive, open-ended change. The theory of biological evolution through natural selection integrated the life sciences under one explanatory umbrella. Many suggest that this theory can also explain cultural evolution, integrating the social sciences under one explanatory umbrella as well. Darwin’s theory solved the problem of how change persists in lineages despite that acquired traits aren’t transmitted. Culture doesn’t suffer from this problem; once one teapot had a handle, all teapots could have handles. Culture also lacks the algorithmic structure necessary for natural selection to be applicable. We have two systems of transmission, but only one system of inheritance. (If your parents’ bone repair genes never turn on, you still inherit them, and your bones heal. But if they don’t teach you to ski, you can’t ski. That’s because ski knowledge is acquired, not inherited.) Natural selection explains cumulative, adaptive change through differential reproduction of randomly generated heritable variations. Cultural evolution violates the necessary conditions for natural selection to be a viable theory: random variation, discrete units that compete and are copied with high fidelity, and vertical transmission of inherited traits (not horizontal transmission of acquired traits). To claim Darwin thought natural selection is mere ‘variation + selection’ undercuts his accomplishment; he recognized the significance of distinguishing between inherited and acquired traits. Darwinian models of culture portray similarity due to horizontal transfer as similarity due to common ancestry. Cultural Darwinists soldier on by ignoring cultural change that occurs during the generation, expression, and reception of ideas. But to maintain a Darwinian perspective on culture we must view humans as passive imitators and transmitters of pre-packaged cultural units, ignoring the spark of creativity and intelligence that define our humanness. It’s time to figure out what kind of evolutionary framework can accommodate the network-like patterns observed in culture.