| 1. |
- Andersson, Claes, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Toward a Macroevolutionary Theory of Human Evolution: The Social Protocell
- 2019
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Ingår i: Biological Theory. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1555-5550 .- 1555-5542. ; 14, s. 86-102
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite remarkable empirical and methodological advances, our theoretical understanding of the evolutionary processes that made us human remains fragmented and contentious. Here, we make the radical proposition that the cultural communities within which Homo emerged may be understood as a novel exotic form of organism. The argument begins from a deep congruence between robust features of Pan community life cycles and protocell models of the origins of life. We argue that if a cultural tradition, meeting certain requirements, arises in the context of such a “social protocell,” the outcome will be an evolutionary transition in individuality whereby traditions and hominins coalesce into a macroscopic bio-socio-technical system, with an organismal organization that is culturally inherited through irreversible fission events on the community level. We refer to the resulting hypothetical evolutionary individual as a “sociont.” The social protocell provides a preadapted source of alignment of fitness interests that addresses a number of open questions about the origins of shared adaptive cultural organization, and the derived genetic (and highly unusual) adaptations that support them. Also, social cooperation between hominins is no longer in exclusive focus since cooperation among traditions becomes salient in this model. This provides novel avenues for explanation. We go on to hypothesize that the fate of the hominin in such a setting would be mutualistic coadaptation into a part-whole relation with the sociont, and we propose that the unusual suite of derived features in Homo is consistent with this hypothesis.
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| 2. |
- Brennan, Geoffrey
(författare)
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Keeping Company with Seabright
- 2011
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Ingår i: Biological Theory. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1555-5542 .- 1555-5550. ; 6:2, s. 106-112
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- According to Paul Seabright, “the unplanned but sophisticated coordination of modern economies is a remarkable fact that needs an explanation.” In this paper, I explore what is remarkable about modern economies and investigate what Seabright identifies as the aspect “that needs an explanation.” Essentially, Seabright is interested in the fact that modern economies require a great deal in the way of trustworthy behavior (and trust) in order to function well—and these trust relations must operate specifically among “strangers”! The puzzle for him is how relations of trust (and trustworthiness) among strangers could conceivably have arisen from our tribal evolutionary past. I raise several queries about his diagnosis of this puzzle and of his answer to it.
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| 3. |
- Davison, Dinah R., et al.
(författare)
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Did Human Culture Emerge in a Cultural Evolutionary Transition in Individuality?
- 2021
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Ingår i: Biological Theory. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1555-5550 .- 1555-5542. ; 16:4, s. 213-236
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality (ETI) have been responsible for the major transitions in levels of selection and individuality in natural history, such as the origins of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, and eusocial insects. The integrated hierarchical organization of life thereby emerged as groups of individuals repeatedly evolved into new and more complex kinds of individuals. The Social Protocell Hypothesis (SPH) proposes that the integrated hierarchical organization of human culture can also be understood as the outcome of an ETI—one that produced a “cultural organism” (a “sociont”) from a substrate of socially learned traditions that were contained in growing and dividing social communities. The SPH predicts that a threshold degree of evolutionary individuality would have been achieved by 2.0–2.5 Mya, followed by an increasing degree of evolutionary individuality as the ETI unfolded. We here assess the SPH by applying a battery of criteria—developed to assess evolutionary individuality in biological units—to cultural units across the evolutionary history of Homo. We find an increasing agreement with these criteria, which buttresses the claim that an ETI occurred in the cultural realm.
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| 4. |
- DiFrisco, James, et al.
(författare)
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Ontological Issues in the Life Sciences
- 2015
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Ingår i: Biological Theory. - : Springer. - 1555-5542 .- 1555-5550. ; 10:2, s. 176-181
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 5. |
- Lombard, Marlize, et al.
(författare)
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Causal Cognition and Theory of Mind in Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
- 2023
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Ingår i: Biological Theory. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1555-5542 .- 1555-5550. ; 18:4, s. 234-252
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is widely thought that causal cognition underpins technical reasoning. Here we suggest that understanding causal cognition as a thinking system that includes theory of mind (i.e., social cognition) can be a productive theoretical tool for the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. With this contribution, we expand on an earlier model that distinguishes seven grades of causal cognition, explicitly presenting it together with a new analysis of the theory of mind involved in the different grades. We then suggest how such thinking may manifest in the archaeological or stone tool record and techno-behaviors of the last three million years or so. Our thesis is threefold: (a) theory of mind is an integral element of causal cognition; (b) generally speaking, the more advanced causal cognition is, the more it is dependent on theory of mind; and (c) the evolution of causal cognition depends more and more on mental representations of hidden variables. Ultimately, the final or seventh grade of causal cognition allows us to reason from a network of hidden variables that, amongst other things, enables the learning, manufacture, and use of complex technological systems. It also facilitates the seamless mapping of knowledge between personal (egocentric), physical, and social networks that allows for newly devised and innovative technical and social outcomes.
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