Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Although Darwinian models are rampant in the socialsciences, social scientists do not face the problem thatmotivated Darwin’s theory of natural selection: the problemof explaining how lineages evolve despite that any traits theyacquire are regularly discarded at the end of the lifetime of theindividuals that acquired them. While the rationale forframing culture as an evolutionary process is correct, it doesnot follow that culture is a Darwinian or selectionist process,or that population genetics provides viable starting points formodeling cultural change. This paper lays out step-by-steparguments as to why a selectionist approach to culturalevolution is inappropriate, focusing on the lack ofrandomness, and lack of a self-assembly code. It summarizesan alternative evolutionary approach to culture: self-otherreorganization via context-driven actualization of potential.