EVOLUTION OF HUMANKIND
Lecture 1: Introduction
Which social phenomena are most important?
Which social phenomena have the largest impact on the largest number of people?
● Culture: for most of what we do we use information from others
● Cooperation: most of what we achieve is with (in)direct help from others
● Conflict: most of our problems are due to (in)direct conflicts with others, from
discrimination to warfare
● Consequences of them: state formation, inequality, climate change, etcetera
● How to study all these things coherently?
Tree of life
Evolution of genes
1. New genes due to reproduction of incumbent genes with random and parental
combinations that increase genetic variation
2. New individuals enter environment, compete and cooperate for scarce resources;
those well-adapted (through genes + learning) are positively selected (i.e. have
offspring)
3. Outflow of negatively selected and survivors‘ offspring change the environment
wherein next generation reproduces
Note: genetic mutations are also combinations
, ● Tree of life has species as elements, not individual organisms –it's a
coarse grained image of evolution
● Zooming in yields fine grained image, of individual organisms with
their unique genes and their interactions, e.g. making children,
eating foods, thereby forming dynamic network
Evolution as dynamic network
● Each food item eaten, help received from others, etcetera, increases survival chance
● Each parasite, bite from predator, conflict with competitor, poisonous food,
etcetera, decreases survival chance
● Reproduction, variation, and selection are consequences of specific interactions in
the environment; adaptation means capability to benefit from certain positive
interactions
● Hence network approach is more fundamental, more precise, and more in line with
sociology
What evolution is not
● No “survival of the fittest” (Spencer), but survival of networks of complementary
diversity
● Evolution does not serve a higher purpose (no teleology) and is not deterministic
● It does not yield optimal adaptation because of environmental changes, trade-offs,
and ongoing maladaptations (e.g., easily believing, fake news)
● A theory about human races. They don't exist biologically, only as a cultural
delusion.
● Judgemental: homosexuality, transgender, hermaphrodite, etcetera are not
“unnatural” because they occur in nature
● reductionism to genes:
○ Darwin (1871): “The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and
the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously
parallel”
Culture: elements
● Culture = “those aspects of thought, speech, behavior, and artifacts which are learned
and transmitted”
● Cultural element = chunk of information
● Examples: social norms; knowledge how to make or handle a technology.
● Elements may be crisp (numbers) or fuzzy (styles)
Cultural evolution: tree if coarse grained; less tree-like if fine grained
, Cultural evolution as network: tree-ish network with cross-cutting branches
Evolution of culture: gaps
● Most culture (and DNA) of the past is unrecorded, but that’s no problem for an
overall understanding of cultural dynamics
● We can look at the general patterns, e.g. most cultural innovations are
improvements of or complements to existing things
3-step model of cultural evolution
1 a. New culture (innovation): combination of complementary cultural elements, possibly
from longer past, plus random luck
1 b. Cultural transmission
● Innovation = taking ideas from others and combining them into something new;
transmission = taking ideas from or teaching them to others without combination,
hence a simple version of (1a)
● Transmission can precede, coincide with, or follow combination
● Elements may be changed during transmission but then it is in fact combination
(1a)
2. Cultural use and selection
● People use cultural elements when interacting with others or with nature. Based on
these experiences, they keep cultural elements they consider valuable and discard
others - outcompeted by more appealing ones
● These choices may not be voluntary, e.g., when victors of war force everyone to
speak their language
● Some cultural selection happens through natural selection, e.g. smokers falling ill
3. New, modified, kept, discarded, and forgotten cultural elements change social/natural
environment
, Fine grained example at micro level: Two people talking
(1a) you combine certain words into sentences that (2) you use in interaction with (and at
the same time (1b) transmit to) someone else who provides feedback, if only through subtle
cues, that may sometimes result in selecting out, or, in contrast, more frequently using,
certain words and phrases in future encounters. (3) In most cases, the impact on your social
environment is small, e.g., alter responses to your question, and your sentences are
forgotten.
(1) Steps 1b and 2 are distinguished analytically but overlap in time
Coarse grained example at macro level: language change
(1) Some people recombine letters into a new spelling
or introduce a new word, then:
(2 & 3)
