Bøger af George F. Steiner

In this treatise, a set of complementary coordinates that illustrate the continuum between biological and cultural modes of evolution is proposed. These define random processes that determine various levels of specialization or autonomy. However, within the cultural coordinates, evolution acquires teleological aspects, due to biased perception and transmission techniques. The inherent risk of selecting for cultural values as desirable goals of biological adaptation is avoided by leveling mechanisms that are functionally similar to biological neoteny. It is suggested that, despite an evolutionary line based on tendencies that enabled biological flexibility, we have become a species rigidly specialized to our own conscious constructs of reality. Moreover, accelerated cultural adaptation led to rapid morphological and cognitive changes that have baffled paleoanthropologists to such an extent that various exotic evolutionary scenarios were forwarded to explain them. An inevitable predisposition to psychological disorders has accompanied these changes, depending on how modern cognitive abilities were applied and on how the inherent risks of cultural evolution were managed.

By considering cumulative cultural evolution the ¿natural choice¿ of all cognitively modern humans, gene-culture coevolution theory implies that the ¿ratcheting¿ of innovations is the only index of ¿progress.¿ In the modelling of the theory the stress is placed on social complexity, the absence of which would render small and isolated populations vulnerable to the ¿treadmill effect,¿ the inevitable consequence of impaired social learning. However, the anthropological literature documents isolated hunter-gatherer groups that have developed intricate exchange networks that do not necessarily rely on technological innovation and function only in low demographic settings. Not only that the biases upon which transmission depends in cumulative cultural evolution¿prestige, skills, success¿are unknown, but certain ¿leveling mechanisms¿ inhibit these very parameters and thus, no cultural models can rise to prominence. Contrary to the predictions of the theory, these societies do not seem to be plagued by cultural ¿loss¿ and, instead of hopelessly running the treadmill and living in poverty, they have developed egalitarian and, to an extent, ¿affluent¿ societies.