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(1985) Sociobiology and epistemology, Dordrecht, Springer.
Recent evidence indicates that biological evolution and cultural history are linked together. Study of the linkage has been active in the past several years and constitutes a new phase of investigation in sociobiology. The work is of particular interest to philosophical and interdisciplinary inquiry because it avoids the earlier biological determinism and animal comparisons, emphasizing instead the multiple roles played by cultural transmission, genetic inheritance, and individual mental development within specifically human social systems. Culture is proposed to be shaped in part by biological mechanisms that direct the assembly of the human mind during socialization. These mechanisms create the rules by which human nature governs itself, supporting individual choice and the social forms emergent in human group behavior. The frequencies of the gene variants prescribing these mechanisms are in turn influenced by evolutionary forces exerted in the context of particular cultures. The forces include but are not limited to natural selection. Mathematical theories have been developed that begin to trace the course of the gene-culture coevolutionary relationship and use it to further unify biology with the social sciences and humanities.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-5370-3_1
Full citation:
Lumsden, C. J. , Gushurst, A. C. (1985)., Gene-culture coevolution: humankind in the making, in J. H. Fetzer (ed.), Sociobiology and epistemology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 3-28.
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