Cultural Evolution

Conceptual Challenges

By: Tim Lewens

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Hardcover | 1 September 2015

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Hardcover
192 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.5 x 14.6 x 2.0

Hardcover

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Tim Lewens aims to understand what it means to take an evolutionary approach to cultural change, and why it is that this approach is often treated with suspicion. Convinced of the exceptional power of natural selection, many thinkers--typically working in biological anthropology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary biology--have suggested it should be freed from the confines of biology, and applied to cultural change in humans and other animals. At the same time, others-typically with backgrounds in disciplines like social anthropology and history-have been just as vocal in dismissing the evolutionary approach to culture. What drives these disputes over Darwinism in the social sciences?
While making a case for the value of evolutionary thinking for students of culture, Lewens shows why the concerns of sceptics should not dismissed as mere prejudice, confusion, or ignorance. Indeed, confusions about what evolutionary approaches entail are propagated by their proponents, as well as by their detractors. By taking seriously the problems faced by these approaches to culture, Lewens shows how such approaches can be better formulated, where their most significant limitations lie, and how the tools of cultural evolutionary thinking might become more widely accepted.

Industry Reviews

Lewens' work greatly contributes to develop a renewed, more mature, debate on the nature of cultural evolution and, I believe, will stimulate more scholars to take part in it. * Lorenzo Baravalle, Science and Education *
This wide ranging and clearly written book offers a comprehensive review of CET and exhorts us to see beyond the dichotomous distinctions between nature and culture, biology and culture and the universal and the cultural to 'show how the natural and social sciences might ultimately be knitted back together'. * British Society of Literature and Science *
lucid and engaging...Well-informed about both cultural evolutionary theory and the objections raised against it, Lewens plays the role of an honest broker. * Cecilia Heyes, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science *
Cambridge philosopher Tim Lewens's spritely little book, Cultural Evolution, is a splendid introduction to the topic, looking in careful detail at much of the discussion today. One merit of philosophy is that done properly it does lay out the issues and point to the proposed options leading the way forward. Cultural Evolution does all of this and more and hence is much to be welcomed. * M. Ruse, New Biological Books *

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