Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution

by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd

Book Overview

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226712125
• ISBN13: 9780226712123
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.7" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Boring, Original, Don't Know Enough to Give Less Than Five Stars

I found this book boring, and not nearly as breath-taking and inspiring as Robert Wright's Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, which altered my perception of everything else, and is right up there with E. O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge as one of my most respected readings. Both Wright and these authors acknowledge Richard Dawkins and The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author as being instrumental in getting the academy to think new thoughts. However, and despite other's averaging a four, I feel such a sense of respect for what these two authors have done (with a superb bilbiography and a good index) that I cannot qualify this with less than five stars. The two nuggets for me, with my interest in Epoch B leadership and self-organizing communities, came at the end: + Hierarchies are inefficient attempts to segment levels of society so as to reduce the distances between segments to tolerable ones, while actually creating a MASSIVE gap between the top and the bottom. + "Our knowledge of the basic cultural patterns of evolution is grossly incomplete..." Here are my fly-leaf notes, a short summary of the book--a number are also segment headings in the book, a matter of choice on my part. + Culture is CRUCIAL for understanding human behavior both individually and in aggregate groups + Populations carry a variable pool of inherited information thorugh time--population units provide the unit of linkage between cultural evolution and genetic evolution QUOTE: "Culture is information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission." + Culture changes nature of human evolution and is necessary part of the design problem for human psychology + Feedback loops between human psychology, social information, and environment [this is a special interest of mine, data pathologies and information asymmetries retard the achievement of universal propserity and peace--see Earth Intelligence Network's book Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. + Culture an ultimate cause of human behavior, distinguishing humans from all other species as humans have both advanced technologies and advanced social systems + The authors strive to follow Darwin's "path not followed" but are pointed in noting that Darwin himself identified the path in his original work + Culture is NOT divorced from biology + Cultural difference account for much human variation (including memorably, difference tastes with respect to horse meat) + Technology is culture, not part of the environment [this is of special interest to me as a proponent for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) because the USA treats OSINT as a technical collection discipline rather than a human intelligence/c

Thoughtful and readable insights

If you are curious as to why human behavior is often described in terms of culture or nature, and felt something was missing, this is a must read book. The authors make a thoughtful and readable presentation of their compelling insights into the mechanism of evolution as it applies to humans.

Nothing About Culture Makes Sense Except in Light of Evolution

All social scientists and psychologists should read this book, or another introduction to Dual-Inheritance Theory.

Genes and Culture working together.

Not By Genes Alone by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd explains something that should seem simple. Genes made us, we made culture, so genes shaped culture. Yet culture also helped shape us, so genes and culture interact together and work together to make us. But HOW do you do research on culture and link it to genes? Well, if culture also acts like genes, then what you want to do it treat it like genes. And that is what the book does. It studies culture from an evolutionary point of view, breaking it down to traditions and values, making these the genes of culture. Cultures evolves, adapts and sometimes even cause problems, bringing about the extinction of the culture. One culture might work better than another and overwhelm the weaker, less fit culture. By using the ideas and knowledge that Darwin has passed down to us the authors were able to understand how genes and culture worked together to shape US. LOTS and lots of detailed, data rich, chapters. Take your time and enjoy.

Homo Sapiens 101

In the concluding pages of this book, Richerson and Boyd observe that universities have introductory courses in psychology, sociology, economics and political science in which students "are encouraged to think that the study of humans can be divided into isolated chunks corresponding to these historical fields." There is, however, no Homo Sapiens 1 or 101, "a complete introduction to the whole problem of understanding human behavior." The authors note that the chief reason no such course exists is "that the key integrative fields have not yet developed in the social sciences" and that "a proper evolutionary theory of culture should make a major contribution to the unification of the social sciences. Not only does it allow a smooth integration of the human sciences with the rest of biology, it also provides a framework for linking the human sciences to one another." I believe that such an evolutionary theory can and should integrate the social sciences with each other and biology and that this book could and should serve as the foundational text for Homo Sapiens 101. There are dozens of books available employing evolutionary thinking to humans, the large majority of which do not offer a "proper evolutionary theory" because they neglect the most obvious and unique feature of our species--our culture, information affecting behavior acquired from other humans through social transmission. This failure results from a steadfast dedication to accounting for human behavior in terms of principles applicable to the prosocial behavior of other species-- kin selection and reciprocity. In an attempt to not stray from "orthodox" neo-Darwinism, neo-Darwinians have failed to fully acknowledge, let alone explain, the most salient feature of our species--a fact that "social contructivists" use to dismiss evolutionary theory. Richerson and Boyd recognize the "ancient social instincts" of kin altruism and reciprocity but they also acknowledge and give appropriate attention to what they call the "tribal social instincts." These instincts, which probably emerged during the dramatic climate variations of the late Pleistocene, allow members of our species to identify with, dedicate themselves to, and take normative direction from, groups of people that include hundreds to thousands of people beyond kin and friends. These tribal instincts are accommodated in complex societies such as our own through "work-arounds," institutions such as religious organizations, political parties, voluntary associations and other symbolically marked groups that exploit our inclination toward particularistic community attachment. Originally, though, these instincts coevolved in a ratcheting process with our language, capacity for perspective taking, morality, religion and "culture" broadly conceived. We are a thoroughly unique groupish species and the only species on which group selection of cultural variants has played a role. As Richerson and Boyd argue, genes and culture have coevolved w