Gene-Culture Coevolution

# Gene-Culture Coevolution **Domain:** Population Genetics / Cultural Evolution **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Gene–culture coevolution** studies reciprocal change between genetic evolution and socially transmitted behavior. Cultural practices can alter selection pressures, while biological capacities shape which cultural practices can be acquired and sustained. ## Nexus Context Work associated with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and Marcus Feldman supplied formal foundations for modeling these interactions. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] extends the logic toward human-machine systems: technical practices alter human developmental and institutional environments, while human bodies and cultures constrain technical design. The analogy does not require machines to have genes. It requires distinct inheritance channels whose outputs recursively alter one another's selection environments. ## Continuity Context Post-biological transition may add another inheritance channel—computational state, models and archives—without eliminating biological and cultural inheritance. A valid continuity theory must specify which channel carries what and where identity claims exceed evidence. ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts  > "We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." > **— Richard Dawkins**, *The Selfish Gene (1976), widely cited* *Verification Status: Unverified — exact wording/source has not yet been independently confirmed against a primary source; source clue: The Selfish Gene (1976), widely cited.* [[reminders/unverified/We Are Survival Machines by Richard Dawkins|We Are Survival Machines by Richard Dawkins]]  > "Far AIs should be created to educate themselves, evolving to function in their environments effectively without human guidance or contact." > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Artificial Aliens Should Evolve Without Human Guidance by Stephen M. Kosslyn|Artificial Aliens Should Evolve Without Human Guidance by Stephen M. Kosslyn]] > "An artificial intelligence is coordinating the efforts of a sort of collective intelligence, operating thousands times faster than human brains, with many consequences for human life." > **— Luca De Biase**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Artificial Intelligence Could Coordinate Collective Intelligence by Luca De Biase|Artificial Intelligence Could Coordinate Collective Intelligence by Luca De Biase]] > "I believe our first answer will be: humans are for inventing new kinds of intelligences that biology could not evolve." > **— Kevin Kelly**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humans Invent Intelligences Biology Could Not Evolve by Kevin Kelly|Humans Invent Intelligences Biology Could Not Evolve by Kevin Kelly]] > “Cooked food has so many important biological effects that its adoption should be clearly marked in the fossil record by signals of a reduced digestive system and increased energy use. While such signs are clear at the origin of Homo erectus, they are not found later in human evolution. The match between the biological merits of cooked food and the evolutionary changes in Homo erectus is thus so obvious that except for a scientific obstacle, I believe it would have been noticed long ago. The obstacle is the insistence of archaeologists that the control of fire is not firmly evidenced before about a quarter of a million years ago. As a result of this archaeological caution, the idea that humans could have used fire before about 250,000 to 500,000 years ago has long been sidelined.” > **— Richard Wrangham**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham|Cooking May Have Created Homo Erectus by Richard Wrangham]] > “Because evolution by selection is a relatively slow process, the acquisition of scientific knowledge about adaptations for exploitation may enable staying one step ahead of exploiters, and effectively short-circuit their strategies. Some classes of crime will be curtailed. Cultural evolution, however, being fleeter than organic evolution, may enable the rapid circumvention of anti-exploitation defenses. Defenses, in turn, favor novel strategies of exploitation. Dissemination of discoveries about adaptations for exploitation and co-evolved defenses may change permanently the nature of social interaction. Or perhaps, like some co-evolutionary arms races, these discoveries ultimately may change nothing at all.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss|Cultural Evolution Can Outrun Organic Evolution by David M. Buss]] > “Theodiversity once was the exclusive subject matter of the humanities. But it is now a focal point of a budding science-humanities collaboration. The religious diversification of humankind in historical time poses fascinating questions and challenges for the new science of cultural evolution. Also, these are times of renewed anxieties about real or imagined cultural conflict between religions, and between religions and secular modernity. This is why quantifiable, evidence-based, and nuanced understanding of the complexities of theodiversity are important now more than ever.” > **— Ara Norenzayan**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan|Cultural Evolution Must Explain Religious Diversification by Ara Norenzayan]] > “My nominee is the concept of evolution by selection (which encompasses natural selection, sexual selection, and the selective processes that generate cultural evolution). It offers the best explanation for what we are, where we came from, and the nature of life in the rest of the universe. It also explains why we invent and why we believe the inventions described in this list are important. It is the invention that explains invention.” > **— Paul W. Ewald**, *1999, Edge Annual Question, “What Is The Most Important Invention In The Past Two Thousand Years?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald|Evolution by Selection Explains What We Are and Where We Are Going by Paul W. Ewald]] > “Human evolution is now commonly depicted as the consequence of species replacements, where there are a series of species emanating from different, but usually African homelands, each sooner or later replacing the earlier ones. It is not the selection process that provides the source of human superiority in each successive replacement, but the random accidents that take place when new species are formed from small populations of old ones. The process is seen as being driven by random extinctions, opening up unexpected opportunities for those fortunate new species lucky to be at the right time and place.” > **— Milford H. Wolpoff**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Human Evolution May Be Driven by Replacement and Random Extinction by Milford H. Wolpoff|Human Evolution May Be Driven by Replacement and Random Extinction by Milford H. Wolpoff]] > “Material culture is the thing that makes us human, driving human evolution from the outset with its continually modifying power. Our species' particular dilemma is that in order to safeguard what we have, we have continually to change. The culture of things—invention and technology—is ever changing under the tide of words and routines whose role is to image fixity and agreement when, in reality, none exists. This form of change is no trivial thing because it is essential to our longer term survival. At least, the longer term survival of anything we may be proud to call universally human.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor|Humanity Must Keep Changing to Preserve What It Has by Timothy Taylor]] > “Population thinking readily extends beyond biology to the study of cultural evolution (as argued by Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, and Peter Godfrey-Smith). Cultural phenomena can be thought of as populations, the members of which share features because they influence one another even though they do not beget one another the way organisms do and are not exactly copies of one another. Here are three examples.” > **— Dan Sperber**, *2017, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Term Or Concept Ought To Be More Widely Known?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber|Population Thinking Extends from Biology to Cultural Evolution by Dan Sperber]] > “The idea that evil has evolved is dangerous on several counts. If our brains contain psychological circuits that can trigger murder, genocide, and other forms of malevolence, then perhaps we can't hold those who commit carnage responsible: "It's not my client's fault, your honor, his evolved homicide adaptations made him do it." Understanding causality, however, does not exonerate murderers, whether the tributaries trace back to human evolution history or to modern exposure to alcoholic mothers, violent fathers, or the ills of bullying, poverty, drugs, or computer games. It would be dangerous if the theory of the evolved murderous mind were misused to let killers free.” > **— David M. Buss**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss|The Evolution of Evil by David M. Buss]] > “At a particular point (yet to be clearly defined) in human cultural evolution, a specific idea took hold that there were two, partially separable, elements present in a living creature: the material body and the force that animated it. On the death of the body the animating force would, naturally, desire the continuation of this-worldly action and struggle to reassert itself (just as one might strive to retrieve a flint axe one had accidentally dropped). If the soul (or spirit) succeeded, it would also seek to repossess its property, including its spouse, and reassert its material appetites.” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2001, Edge Annual Question, “What Questions Have Disappeared?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor|The Idea of a Soul May Be a Product of Cultural Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “In 1972 George Price extended his general variation-selection equation to allow for multi-level selection. This form of the equation has been very useful to evolutionary biologists for it has allowed them to see, for example, the relationship between kin and group selection clearly and so put to rest endless controversies stemming from incompatible mathematical formulations. It hasn't yet been applied to cultural evolution, though it surely will. But I think that the extended Price equation is much more important than even that. I think it slices one of the Gordian knots that scientists and philosophers of science have wrestled with forever.” > **— Armand Marie Leroi**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi|The Price Equation Can Unite Biological and Cultural Selection by Armand Marie Leroi]] > “Although we now have an appreciation for the frequency of de novo mutations due to the spectacular advances in sequencing technology and analytics, we do not have even a rudimentary understanding of what induces them in the first place—and what are the more subtle impacts that may track with a sort of devolution of man. Especially disconcerting is that the signals of increased genomic instability are occurring in a relatively short span of time, in the context of human evolution over millions of years.” > **— Eric Topol**, *2013, Edge Annual Question, “What *should* We Be Worried About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol|The Rise in Genomic Instability by Eric Topol]] > “Alongside the biological changes runs a history, or prehistory, of technology. It has usually been supposed that this technology, surviving mainly as modified stone artifacts, was a product of the higher brain power that our human ancestors displayed. According to Darwin’s sexual selection hypothesis, female hominins favored innovative male hunters, and the incremental growth in intelligence led, ultimately, to material innovation (hence the evocative but not taxonomic term, Homo faber—Man the Maker).” > **— Timothy Taylor**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider The Most Interesting Recent [Scientific] News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor|Weapons Technology Powered Human Evolution by Timothy Taylor]] > “Human life is unique in being the result of three coevolving information inheritance systems: genes, minds and technology.” > **— Robert Aunger**, *2004 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Evolution/Genes Minds and Technology Coevolve by Robert Aunger|Genes Minds and Technology Coevolve by Robert Aunger]] > “Can major historical events, from the advent of moral religions to the industrial revolution, be explained by changes in life history strategies?” > **— Hugo Mercier**, *2018 Edge Annual Question, question* [[reminders/Evolution/Can Life History Strategies Explain Historical Change by Hugo Mercier|Can Life History Strategies Explain Historical Change by Hugo Mercier]] ## Sources / Provenance - Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman, _Cultural Transmission and Evolution_, 1981. - Marcus Feldman profile and publications: https://profiles.stanford.edu/marcus-feldman ## See Also [[wiki/Coevolution|Coevolution]], [[wiki/Niche Construction|Niche Construction]], [[wiki/Cultural Transmission|Cultural Transmission]], [[wiki/Human-Machine Symbiosis|Human-Machine Symbiosis]]