Reply to Commentaries on 'An Evolutionary Framework for Cultural Change: Selectionism versus Communal Exchange'

TL;DR

This paper responds to diverse scholarly commentaries on an evolutionary framework for cultural change, emphasizing the value of interdisciplinary perspectives and outlining future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a synthesis of multiple disciplinary viewpoints on cultural evolution and discusses how to integrate these insights into a comprehensive framework.

Findings

Support for the evolutionary approach to culture

Recognition of interdisciplinary contributions

Proposed future research directions

Abstract

The commentators have brought a wealth of new perspectives to the question of how culture evolves. Each of their diverse disciplines--ranging from psychology to biology to anthropology to economics to engineering--has a valuable contribution to make to our understanding of this complex, multifaceted topic. Though the vast majority of their comments were supportive of my approach, it is natural that a reply such as this focus on points where my views differ from that of the commentators. ... I conclude by saying that I am grateful to the commentators for their diverse perspectives and insights, their overall support for the project, and provocative ideas for where to go from here. Clearly there are many fascinating avenues to explore as we move forward on our quest to understand how culture evolves.