Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture
Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture

Author: Nathalie Gontier

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-07-25

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 1402033958

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For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together. Of course there have been excellent conferences on Evolutionary Epistemology in the past, as well as numerous conferences on the topics of Language and Culture. However, until now these disciplines had not been brought together into one all-encompassing conference. Moreover, previously there never had been such stress on alternative and complementary theories of the Modern Synthesis. Today we know that natural selection and evolution are far from synonymous and that they do not explain isomorphic phenomena in the world. ‘Taking Darwin seriously’ is the way to go, but today the time has come to take alternative and complementary theories that developed after the Modern Synthesis, equally seriously, and, furthermore, to examine how language and culture can merit from these diverse disciplines. As this volume will make clear, a specific inter- and transdisciplinary approach is one of the next crucial steps that needs to be taken, if we ever want to unravel the secrets of phenomena such as language and culture.

Cultural Evolution
Cultural Evolution

Author: Peter J. Richerson

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 0262019752

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Leading scholars report on current research that demonstrates the central role of cultural evolution in explaining human behavior. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional disciplinary boundaries. To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, and economics come together to explore the central role of cultural evolution in different aspects of human endeavor. The contributors take as their guiding principle the idea that cultural evolution can provide an important integrating function across the various disciplines of the human sciences, as organic evolution does for biology. The benefits of adopting a cultural evolutionary perspective are demonstrated by contributions on social systems, technology, language, and religion. Topics covered include enforcement of norms in human groups, the neuroscience of technology, language diversity, and prosociality and religion. The contributors evaluate current research on cultural evolution and consider its broader theoretical and practical implications, synthesizing past and ongoing work and sketching a roadmap for future cross-disciplinary efforts. Contributors Quentin D. Atkinson, Andrea Baronchelli, Robert Boyd, Briggs Buchanan, Joseph Bulbulia, Morten H. Christiansen, Emma Cohen, William Croft, Michael Cysouw, Dan Dediu, Nicholas Evans, Emma Flynn, Pieter François, Simon Garrod, Armin W. Geertz, Herbert Gintis, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Daniel B. M. Haun, Joseph Henrich, Daniel J. Hruschka, Marco A. Janssen, Fiona M. Jordan, Anne Kandler, James A. Kitts, Kevin N. Laland, Laurent Lehmann, Stephen C. Levinson, Elena Lieven, Sarah Mathew, Robert N. McCauley, Alex Mesoudi, Ara Norenzayan, Harriet Over, Jürgen Renn, Victoria Reyes-García, Peter J. Richerson, Stephen Shennan, Edward G. Slingerland, Dietrich Stout, Claudio Tennie, Peter Turchin, Carel van Schaik, Matthijs Van Veelen, Harvey Whitehouse, Thomas Widlok, Polly Wiessner, David Sloan Wilson

Evolutionary Epistemology and its Implications for Humankind
Evolutionary Epistemology and its Implications for Humankind

Author: Franz M. Wuketits

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1990-01-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780791402856

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This books aims to outline the scientific (biological) foundations of evolutionary epistemology, and to discuss its implications for humankind. Wuketits covers all aspects of evolutionary epistemology, including its empirical foundations and its philosophical and anthropological consequences, providng an accessible introduction with a minimum of jargon.

Why Only Us
Why Only Us

Author: Robert C. Berwick

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-05-12

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0262533499

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Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.

Open Questions in Quantum Physics
Open Questions in Quantum Physics

Author: G. Tarozzi

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9400952457

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Due to its extraordinary predictive power and the great generality of its mathematical structure, quantum theory is able, at least in principle, to describe all the microscopic and macroscopic properties of the physical world, from the subatomic to the cosmological level. Nevertheless, ever since the Copen hagen and Gottingen schools in 1927 gave it the definitive formu lation, now commonly known as the orthodox interpretation, the theory has suffered from very serious logical and epistemologi cal problems. These shortcomings were immediately pointed out by some of the principal founders themselves of quantum theory, to wit, Planck, Einstein, Ehrenfest, Schrodinger, and de Broglie, and by the philosopher Karl Popper, who assumed a position of radical criticism with regard to the standard formulation of the theory. The aim of the participants in the workshop on Open Questions in Quantum Physics, which was held in Bari (Italy), in the Department of Physics of the University, during May 1983 and whose Proceedings are collected in the present volume, accord ingly was to discuss the formal, the physical and the epistemo logical difficulties of quantum theory in the light of recent crucial developments and to propose some possible resolutions of three basic conceptual dilemmas, which are posed respectively ~: (a) the physical developments of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument and Bell's theorem, i. e.

Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture
Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture

Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 1108470971

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A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Concepts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology
Concepts and Approaches in Evolutionary Epistemology

Author: Franz M. Wuketits

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 9400971273

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The present volume brings together current interdisciplinary research which adds up to an evolutionary theory of human knowledge, Le. evolutionary epistemology. It comprises ten papers, dealing with the basic concepts, approaches and data in evolutionary epistemology and discussing some of their most important consequences. Because I am convinced that criticism, if not confused with mere polemics, is apt to stimulate the maturation of a scientific or philosophical theory, I invited Reinhard Low to present his critical view of evolutionary epistemology and to indicate some limits of our evolutionary conceptions. The main purpose of this book is to meet the urgent need of both science and philosophy for a comprehensive up-to-date approach to the problem of knowledge, going beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of scientific and philosophical thought. Evolutionary epistemology has emerged as a naturalistic and science-oriented view of knowledge taking cognizance of, and compatible with, results of biological, psychological, anthropological and linguistic inquiries concerning the structure and development of man's cognitive apparatus. Thus, evolutionary epistemology serves as a frame work for many contemporary discussions of the age-old problem of human knowledge.

The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy
The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy

Author: Richard Joyce

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-08-16

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 1317655567

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In recent years, the relation between contemporary academic philosophy and evolutionary theory has become ever more active, multifaceted, and productive. The connection is a bustling two-way street. In one direction, philosophers of biology make significant contributions to theoretical discussions about the nature of evolution (such as "What is a species?"; "What is reproductive fitness?"; "Does selection operate primarily on genes?"; and "What is an evolutionary function?"). In the other direction, a broader group of philosophers appeal to Darwinian selection in an attempt to illuminate traditional philosophical puzzles (such as "How could a brain-state have representational content?"; "Are moral judgments justified?"; "Why do we enjoy fiction?"; and "Are humans invariably selfish?"). In grappling with these questions, this interdisciplinary collection includes cutting-edge examples from both directions of traffic. The thirty contributions, written exclusively for this volume, are divided into six sections: The Nature of Selection; Evolution and Information; Human Nature; Evolution and Mind; Evolution and Ethics; and Evolution, Aesthetics, and Art. Many of the contributing philosophers and psychologists are international leaders in their fields.

Beyond the Meme
Beyond the Meme

Author: Alan C. Love

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 145296162X

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Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena. Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes. Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.

The Evolutionary Emergence of Language
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language

Author: Chris Knight

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-11-20

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 9780521786966

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Language has no counterpart in the animal world. Unique to Homo sapiens, it appears inseparable from human nature. But how, when and why did it emerge? The contributors to this volume - linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and others - adopt a modern Darwinian perspective which offers a bold synthesis of the human and natural sciences. As a feature of human social intelligence, language evolution is driven by biologically anomalous levels of social cooperation. Phonetic competence correspondingly reflects social pressures for vocal imitation, learning, and other forms of social transmission. Distinctively human social and cultural strategies gave rise to the complex syntactical structure of speech. This book, presenting language as a remarkable social adaptation, testifies to the growing influence of evolutionary thinking in contemporary linguistics. It will be welcomed by all those interested in human evolution, evolutionary psychology, linguistic anthropology, and general linguistics.