Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T05:21:13.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - How Can Conceptual Analysis Contribute to Scientific Practice?

The Case of Cultural Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2020

By
Tim Lewens
Edited by
Kostas Kampourakis  and
Tobias Uller
Kostas Kampourakis
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Tobias Uller
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

Mainstream philosophers often ask questions about concepts that are of fundamental importance to our dealings with each other and with the world. They might ask what is knowledge, or justice, or art. Philosophers of science have asked similar questions about fundamental concepts that characterize science in general: What, for example, is explanation, or probability, or a law of nature? This kind of approach typically aims to understand key concepts in science better, but it does not always aim to inform or assist scientific practice. Moreover, this approach sometimes presupposes – unwisely, according to its critics – that scientists jointly employ some reasonably unified concept of explanation, probability, or a law of nature.

Type
Chapter
Information
Philosophy of Science for Biologists , pp. 146 - 167
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Avital, E. & Jablonka, E. (2000). Animal Traditions: Behavioural Inheritance in Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bloch, M. (2012). Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. (1996). Why Culture Is Common, but Cultural Evolution Is Rare. Proceedings of the British Academy 88: 77–93.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. (1974). Evolutionary Epistemology. In Schilpp, P. A. (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. & Feldman, M. (1973). Cultural versus Biological Inheritance: Phenotypic Transmission from Parents to Children. American Journal of Human Genetics 25(6): 618–637.Google ScholarPubMed
Cavalli-Sforza, L. & Feldman, M. (1976). Cultural and Biological Evolutionary Processes: Selection for a Trait under Complex Transmission. Theoretical Population Biology 9(2): 238–259.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. & Feldman, M. (1981). Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Charlesworth, D., Barton, N. H., & Charlesworth, B. (2017). The Sources of Adaptive Variation. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284(1855): 20162864.Google Scholar
Clark, A. & Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis 58(1): 7–19.Google Scholar
Clarke, E. & Heyes, C. (2017). The Swashbuckling Anthropologist: Henrich on the Secret of Our Success. Biology and Philosophy 32(2): 289–305.Google Scholar
Creanza, N., Kolodny, O., & Feldman, M. (2017). Cultural Evolutionary Theory: How Culture Evolves and Why It Matters. PNAS 114(30): 7782–7789.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Dean, L., Vale, G., Laland, K., Flynn, E., & Kendal, R. (2013). Human Cumulative Culture: A Comparative Perspective. Biological Reviews 89: 284–301.Google Scholar
Dupré, J. (2012). Processes of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. W. & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1989). On the Theory of Evolution under Genetic and Cultural Transmission with Application to the Lactose Absorption Problem. In Feldman, M. W. (ed.), Mathematical Evolutionary Theory, pp. 145–173. Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. W. & Lewontin, R. C. (1975). The Heritability Hang-Up. Science 190(4220): 1163–1168.Google Scholar
Fishlock, V., Caldwell, C., & Lee, P. (2016). Elephant Resource-Use Traditions. Animal Cognition 19(2): 429–433.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. (2016). The Secret of Our Success. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (1998). The Evolution of Conformist Transmission and the Emergence of Between-Group Differences. Evolution and Human Behavior 19(4): 215–241.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & Boyd, R. (2002). On Modelling Culture and Cognition: Why Cultural Evolution Does Not Require Replication of Representations. Culture and Cognition 2(2): 87–112.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. (1994). Social Learning in Animals: Categories and Mechanisms. Biological Reviews 69(2): 207–31.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. (2012). What’s Social about Social Learning? Journal of Comparative Psychology 126(2): 193–202.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive Gadgets. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hobaiter, C., Poisot, T., Zuberbühler, K., Hoppitt, W., & Gruber, T. (2014). Social Network Analysis Shows Direct Evidence for Social Transmission of Tool Use in Wild Chimpanzees. PLoS Biology 12: e1001960.Google Scholar
Holden, C. & Mace, R. (1997). Phylogenetic Analysis of the Evolution of Lactose Digestion in Adults. Human Biology 69: 605–628.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. (2013). Prospect. In Ingold, T. and Palsson, G. (eds.), Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology, pp. 1–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M. J. (2005). Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jesmer, B. et al. (2018). Is Ungulate Migration Culturally Transmitted? Evidence of Social Learning from Translocated Animals. Science 361(6406): 1023–1025.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laland, K. (2017). Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laland, K. & Brown, G. (2018). The Social Construction of Human Nature. In Lewens, T. & Hannon, E. (eds.), Why We Disagree About Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Laland, K. & Galef, B. (eds.) (2009). The Question of Animal Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laland, K. & Janik, V. (2006). The Animal Cultures Debate. TREE 21(10): 542–547.Google ScholarPubMed
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J. & Feldman, M. (2001). Niche Construction, Biological Evolution, and Cultural Change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(01): 131–46.Google Scholar
Laland, K. et al. (2015). The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Its Structure, Core Assumptions, and Predictions. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 282: 20151019.Google Scholar
Lewens, T. (2007). Darwin. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lewens, T. (2012). The Darwinian View of Culture. Biology and Philosophy 27(5): 745–753.Google Scholar
Lewens, T. (2015). Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewens, T. (2017). Human Nature, Human Culture: The Case of Cultural Evolution. Interface Focus 7: 20170018.Google Scholar
Lewis, H. & Laland, K. (2012). Transmission Fidelity is the Key to the Build-Up of Cumulative Culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 367(1599): 2171–2180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mace, R. (2010). Update to Holden and Mace’s “Phylogenetic Analysis of the Evolution of Lactose Digestion in Adults.” Human Biology 81(5–6): 621–624.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. & Thornton, A. (2018). What Is Cumulative Cultural Evolution? Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285(1880): 20180712.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. (2004). Is Human Cultural Evolution Darwinian? Evidence Reviewed from the Perspective of The Origin of Species. Evolution 58(1): 1–11.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., & Laland, K. (2006). Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29(4): 329–47.Google Scholar
Miska, E. & Ferguson-Smith, A. (2016) Transgenerational Inheritance: Models and Mechanisms of Non-DNA Sequence-Based Inheritance. Science 354(6308): 59.Google Scholar
Odling-Smee, J., Laland, K., & Feldman, M. (2003). Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ram, Y., Liberman, U., & Feldman, M. (2018). Evolution of Vertical and Oblique Transmission under Fluctuating Selection. PNAS 115(6): E1174–E1183.Google Scholar
Rendell, L. & Whitehead, H. (2001). Culture in Whales and Dolphins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(2): 309–324.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. & Boyd, R. (2005). Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Scott-Phillips, T., Blancke, S., & Heintz, C. (2018). Four Misunderstandings about Cultural Attraction. Evolutionary Anthropology 27(4): 162–173.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (2001). Conceptual Tools for a Natural Science of Society and Culture (Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology 1999). Proceedings of the British Academy 111: 297–317.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K. (2012). The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Swallow, D. (2003). Genetics of Lactase Persistence and Lactose Intolerance. Annual Review of Genetics 37(1): 197–219.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Toren, C. (2018). Human Ontogenies as Historical Processes. In Lewens, T. & Hannon, E. (eds.), Why We Disagree About Human Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whiten, A. & Ham, R. (1992). On the Nature and Evolution of Imitation in the Animal Kingdom: Reappraisal of a Century of Research. Advances in the Study of Behaviour 21: 239–277.Google Scholar
Whiten, A. (2000). Primate Culture and Social Learning. Cognitive Science 24(3): 477–508.Google Scholar
Wright, S. (1942). Statistical Genetics and Evolution. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 48: 223–246.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×