For well over a century, Darwinโs theory of natural selection has served as biologyโs grand unifying framework, explaining how species adapt and evolve through the differential replication of randomly generated variations. Given the success of the theory of natural selection in biology, itโs natural to wonder whether it might explain another kind of evolution we see all around us: that of human culture.ย
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Cultural innovations such as technologies, artistic styles, and social practices build on earlier ones, and tend to benefit their bearers, and become more useful over time. Culture exhibits cumulative, adaptive change; it evolves. The question is: How? What kind of scientific framework can accommodate it?
Culture doesnโt face the problem Darwinโs theory was designed to solve, the problem of how change accumulates despite acquired changes getting obliterated each generation. Once someone invented a teapot handle, teapots could thereafter have handles. If we apply natural selection to culture, weโre trying to use a framework specifically designed to explain evolution in systems where acquired traitsย arenโtย transmitted, to explain evolution in a system where theyย are.
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