Darwinism and cultural change

Darwinism and cultural change.

Evolutionary models of cultural change have acquired an important role in attempts to explain the course of human evolution, especially our specialization in knowledge-gathering and intelligent control of environments. In both biological and cultural change, different patterns of explanation become relevant at different 'grains' of analysis and in contexts associated with different explanatory ...

Darwinism and social Darwinism.

Darwinism

Neural Darwinism and Consciousness 1 RUNNING HEAD: Neural Darwinism and Consciousness Neural Darwinism and Consciousness

Neural Darwinism (ND), also called the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS) is a biological theory of brain development and function which is based on evolutionary and developmental principles. ND highlights the importance of selectionist processes underlying these principles. The aim of this literature review is to capture and summarize the essentials of both ND and its theoretical extens...

Cultural innovations and demographic change.

Demography plays a large role in cultural evolution through its effects on the effective rate of innovation. If we assume that useful inventions are rare, then small isolated societies will have low rates of invention. In small populations, complex technology will tend to be lost as a result of random loss or incomplete transmission (the Tasmanian effect). Large populations have more inventors ...