Dual inheritance theory: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 09:53, 8 December 2023

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==Historical development==

In 1876, [[Friedrich Engels]] wrote a manuscript titled [[The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man]], accredited as a founding document of DIH<ref>{{Cite book |last=Foster |first=John |title=Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature |publisher=Monthly Review Press |year=2000 |isbn=9781583670125 |___location=New York |pages=203}}</ref>; “The approach to gene-culture coevolution first developed by Engels and developed later on by anthropologists…” is described by [[Stephen Jay Gould]] as “…the best nineteenth-century case for gene-culture coevolution.”<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gould |first=Stephen |title=An Urchin in the Storm |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=1987 |isbn=0-393-02492-X |___location=New York |pages=111-112}}</ref> The idea that human cultures undergo a similar evolutionary process as genetic evolution also goes back at least to [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]].<ref>Darwin, C. 1874. ''The descent of man and selection in relation to sex.'' 2nd ed. 2 vols. New York: American Home Library.</ref> In the 1960s, [[Donald T. Campbell]] published some of the first theoretical work that adapted principles of evolutionary theory to the evolution of cultures.<ref>Campbell, D. 1965. Variation and selective retention in socio-cultural evolution. In ''Social change in developing areas: A reinterpretation of evolutionary theory'', ed. H. Barringer, G. Blanksten, and R. Mack, 19-49. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company.</ref> In 1976, two developments in cultural evolutionary theory set the stage for DIT. In that year [[Richard Dawkins|Richard Dawkins's]] ''[[The Selfish Gene]]'' introduced ideas of cultural evolution to a popular audience. Although one of the best-selling science books of all time, because of its lack of mathematical rigor, it had little effect on the development of DIT. Also in 1976, geneticists [[Marcus Feldman]] and [[Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza]] published the first dynamic models of gene–culture coevolution.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Feldman | first1 = M. | last2 = Cavalli-Sforna | first2 = L. | year = 1976 | title = Cultural and biological evolutionary processes, selection for a trait under complex transmission | journal = Theoretical Population Biology | volume = 9 | issue = 2| pages = 238–59 | doi=10.1016/0040-5809(76)90047-2 | pmid=1273802}}</ref> These models were to form the basis for subsequent work on DIT, heralded by the publication of three seminal books in the 1980s.

The first was Charles Lumsden and [[E. O. Wilson|E.O. Wilson's]] ''Genes, Mind and Culture''.<ref>Lumsden C., and E. Wilson. 1981. ''Genes, Mind and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</ref> This book outlined a series of mathematical models of how genetic evolution might favor the selection of cultural traits and how cultural traits might, in turn, affect the speed of genetic evolution. While it was the first book published describing how genes and culture might coevolve, it had relatively little effect on the further development of DIT.<ref name="Laland">Laland K. and G. Brown. 2002. ''Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref> Some critics felt that their models depended too heavily on genetic mechanisms at the expense of cultural mechanisms.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Boyd | first1 = R. | last2 = Richerson | first2 = P. | year = 1983 | title = The cultural transmission of acquired variation: effects on genetic fitness | journal = Journal of Theoretical Biology | volume = 100 | issue = 4| pages = 567–96 | doi=10.1016/0022-5193(83)90324-7| pmid = 6876815 | bibcode = 1983JThBi.100..567B }}</ref> Controversy surrounding Wilson's [[Sociobiology#Controversy|sociobiological theories]] may also have decreased the lasting effect of this book.<ref name="Laland" />