180118 SE Cultural Evolution (2019S)

Human life (and, to a lesser degree, the lifes of some other species) is heavily shaped by culture - culture roughly understood as learning by imitation, accumulation of discoveries, and the set of practices and range of artefacts resulting from this process. The idea of conceiving of culture as an evolutionary process has an enormous appeal, but there are differences concerning the question of how exactly to conceive of it, and of its relation to biological evolution. From its origins in Herbert Spencer's (and Charles Darwin's own) thought through meme theory and more recent work on gene/culture co-evolution and cultural "attractors", a wide array of suggestions have been put on the table. They currently seem to be the best bet for functionalism in social science (and the humanities). Philosophical questions in this domain concern issues such as the explanatory power of such theories, and perhaps the question of whether they imply a problematic "reification" of culture.
This course is focused on a close reading of some of the classical and current texts on cultural revolution, and a selection of recent contributions to the philosophy of cultural evolution.