Citation

Henrich J, Boyd R, Richerson PJ. Hum. Nat. 2008; 19(2): 119-137.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s12110-008-9037-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the "cultural fitness" of a mental representation can be inferred from its successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture.

Language: en