How Does Culture Evolve?

TL;DR

This paper presents a complex systems approach using autocatalytic networks to model cultural evolution, emphasizing the role of creativity, worldview dynamics, and social interactions in shaping cultural change.

Contribution

It introduces autocatalytic network models to explain the origin, development, and transmission of culture, integrating insights from multiple scientific disciplines.

Findings

Autocatalytic networks describe cultural change within and between individuals.

Interactions among network components generate novel cultural elements.

Social factors like imitation and social media influence cultural evolution.

Abstract

This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity is guided by the global shape of one's integrated network of memories, concepts, and beliefs: one's worldview. This integrated structure and its dynamical change over time are described using autocatalytic networks. Autocatalytic networks can interact with each other, and they can grow and evolve; through interactions between their components, they generate novel components. Thus, they are used to describe cultural change both within and between individuals, as well as across cultural lineages. The chapter outlines autocatalytic network models of the origin of culture, the cognitive developmental process by which each child becomes a participant in cultural evolution, and the role of imitation, leadership, and social media on cultural evolution, as well as the trade-off between creativity and continuity.