Talk:Cultural evolution

Draft
Tim Waring here -

Looks like we are missing a detailed account of the modern approach to cultural evolution which emerged in the 1980s and which has now founded a society and is growing rapidly today. Namely, we are missing an account of the "explicit" modeling of cultural change that Boyd and Richerson have developed since the 1980s. The key components of "explicit" approach are, in my mind: clearly defined traits, variation, individuals, and population level mechanisms of change, including selection, drift, including the central focus on social learning strategies, imitation, conformity, teaching, etc.

Also missing, the work of Andy Whiten and Kevin Laland's groups on comparative social learning across other animal species.

Thanks Joe, makes more sense. I thought my sandbox had been flushed, until I read your msg with relief. I'll be adding Lee and Kelly's structural ideas, and some of Tim and If's references, over this weekend, if someone doesn't do it beforehand. Then there will be some framework for putting on the meat. AndySLord (talk) 13:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I had the same thought. I've attempted to merge Lee and Kelly's outlines together, with some concessions to wiki conventions (e.g. having a History section first). Nothing final, of course, but maybe it'll help get the ball rolling.
 * We shouldn't forget that there's lots of good content in other articles, e.g. dual inheritance theory and sociocultural evolution, that we may want to merge into here at some point. Also, Evolution is a featured article and I think a very good model for what we should try to accomplish here. Joe Roe (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Looks better already :) I think there will be many pages that we will need to link that wont seem obvious at first, especially if this is also mapping the extent for CE as a field. Evolution is a neat page indeed, and we would do well to Inherit its style. I'll keep an eye out for other exemplars. AndySLord (talk) 17:11, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Greetings folks. In the spirit of let’s get sh*t done, I’ve posted some potential content for the cultural evolution page. My apologies for the lack of formatting, links, Wikipedia-style citations etc. Like some others I need to get up to speed on the editing conventions. Thanks to Andy for the help on this. I’m also struggling with an infected wisdom tooth right now which will hopefully come out tomorrow. I will endeavor to get back on the learning curve and help elaborate/polish this material as quickly as I am able.

But in the meantime I wanted to simply get the ball rolling in terms of content. The draft page outline and some posts have suggested that we eventually incorporate the material on the sociocultural evolution page into our page. What I’ve posted attempts to show how this could be done. I know some people would prefer to keep these discussions separate. However, I think there are a number of advantages: (1) this intellectual history is interesting in itself from the point of view of evolutionary epistemology and/or the history of ideas. In creating our society we should be self-reflexive about that history, (2) people coming into the field as well as wider audiences need to clearly understand this history, including some of its nuances. I think there is a great advantage to having an overview in one place, (3) older “evolutionary”--i.e., developmental--theories have not gone away. They still persist in explicit and implicit forms both in academic and policy forums. One of the reasons they persist is that there are numerous deeply embedded misunderstandings about essentialism, theories of development and so on--e.g., the notion that rejecting determinism obviates the charge of essentialism, the belief held by some very serious scholars that Marx is not an essentialist etc. There are similar misunderstanding regarding social Darwinism which we need to clarify, and finally (4) one way to clearly define what we are about is to contrast it with what we are not.

Anyway, you may all disagree with all of that and want to go in a different direction but either way I hope this gets us going in terms of content. Best Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 20:00, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Since no one has commented I'm going to move ahead with editing the page along the lines suggested.Paul J McLaughlin (talk) 01:59, 1 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Rather than seperating discussion, I would suggest a smart use of hyperlinks: more for readability than anything. Personally, I like to return to the history and more involved stuff (follow links) sometimes after I've got some quick and rough idea of what a subject is about, which in most cases, is all that I am after from Wikipedia (eg. confirming Octopodes was the correct plural). I strongly agree that we need to make clarifications as per your point 4. Hope the tooth gets better. I'm not a dentist; I'm much more familiar with infected wisdom! AndySLord (talk) 16:57, 1 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi Andy. Thanks for the message of support and also concern about my dental issue. Finally feeling better. In terms of the page I talked to Joe Brewer and he said I should push forward with what I've outlined. Whether the Sociocultural evolution page is ultimately folded in remains to be seen. However, I still think it is the best way to go. What I ultimately envision is something like the History of Evolutionary Thought page with plenty of links to more detailed discussions of specific issues. In terms of getting a quick idea of the topic I was thinking that the first two paragraphs I put up would serve that purpose. Any thoughts on how to improve them would be welcome. I'm going to put more material up this weekend and further flesh out my version of an outline. Please let me know what you think. Best Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 14:46, 2 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree that an additional page on the History of socio-cultural evolutionary thought will be a useful future resource. Of course these things do take time, and so testing and getting a quick idea of the scope for material for inclusion or detachment on the CE page is a good idea. I understand the copy and paste from your papers, and that citations need wiki mark-up - if you em me your original paper then I'll help to pop a few refs in. AndySLord (talk) 16:33, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

I've elaborated the outline. This is tentative and still needs some work. Any thoughts? Objections? Additions or deletions? Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 00:42, 9 June 2016 (UTC)


 * As you pointed out, it would be worth considering a seperate page for the history. I think that were each of these heading to be elaborated here, then the page would be a bit too long. I see them as points for inclusion in a paragraph or two with a hyper link. AndySLord (talk) 12:52, 10 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I've added some new material under Aristotle and added and corrected refs. In terms of your concerns about length, these sections can be very short with additional links as you suggest. Overall the article I envisage should be about the same length or less than the History of Evolutionary Thought page, which I think is a model very much worth emulating. I don't think it will be possible or even desirable -- if we want to say something meaningful -- to do this in a couple of paragraphs with links. In many cases the needed discussion -- e.g. what I just wrote about Aristotle's theory of progress -- does not exist, or does not discuss the issues we need to address if are goal is to provide a coherent discussion of the differences between older theories of progress and current theories of cultural evolution. Others contain numerous errors. Trying to add the needed material or make the corrections on all of the relevant pages we'd need to link to is simply not viable and I think would lead to endless discussions with other editors.Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 01:27, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I see what you are saying in reference to the History of Evolutionary Thought, and it seems about right. I take it the headings you have put are currently more like bullet points than of headings for whole sections (sorry, I wasn't clear in my last post, I meant one or two sections, or rather section size paragraphs, instead of paragraphs). Best then write it, see what it looks like, and let people edit it (well that's what happens anyway :) AndySLord (talk) 18:25, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, great!! It sounds like we are on the same page. And yes, the outline headings I put up -- at least for now -- I'm thinking one or two paragraphs each at most. About what I did for Aristotle. I do think collectively we can eventually produce something equivalent to the History of Evolutionary Thought page and that would really be a positive thing for the new society and a nice starting point for younger scholars or recent converts who might have an interest in CE. What we need now is to get more people actively involved. I can write a first draft at least of all the stuff on development/progress though would love help. I can contribute some general arguments about population thinking to lead into the section on populational theories and contribute to sections on organizational ecology and evolutionary epistemology. I would be great if others in the group would take the lead in producing 2-3? paragraphs (or whatever people think is appropriate) for each of the sections (or add sections if something is missing) on populational theories of CE. Volunteers? Nudge, Nudge! Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 19:11, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Two other questions. Do we really want to divide up the bibliography into all those different headings? Or is that just temporary? Given topics on development etc. that I'm adding we would need even more headings and it seems like it would become unwiedly. Perhaps just two sections references and bibliography as in the History of Evolutionary Thought page. I also note that in the latter some citations are directly in the references, some in the bibliography. Is there a convention here I don't understand or is this just different people doing things differently? Do we want to set a convention for our own page? Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 19:11, 13 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Maybe; maybe not. I was the sent the refs in pdf format (see talk, references ie. paragraph below.). I've just copied and pasted them as given and intend to convert them to "{{cite book..." format as and when - That's the great thing about dynamic hyper-documentation, we (or others) can always modify it later. As for conventions, I think thats just people doing things differently, or knowing other tricks. AndySLord (talk) 20:53, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Ready for mainspace?
This thing has been in draft for a long time. It might be time to put it up as-is, and see what the rest of the wiki-world make of it. Worst that could happen is that it gets sent back into draft. AndySLord (talk) 17:02, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree, although we'd have to comment out all the empty section headings. (I was kind of assuming that Joe Brewer would wrap up the wiki workgroup on the CES mailing list somehow and feed it into this article, but I guess that isn't happening.) Joe Roe (talk) 17:17, 8 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I gather Joe is busy with the CES election. If we put it as-is then it will give people chance to either add material to those titles or delete them if they are going nowhere (they can always be added again later). My concern is that it has stagnated in draft. I've suggested people raise any objections to attempting going live next week. OK, it opens it up to being a "free for all", but that is the point of wiki, isn't it? AndySLord (talk) 13:28, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Unless there is an objection, I will shortly be adding back in a lot of the deleted subheadings. Paul J. McLaughlin (talk) 19:44, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

History
As per an email a few days ago and an interesting chapter Pete sent I suggest we take the opportunity to ground CE in The Descent of ManIlfryn (talk) 12:14, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I have started a section - grateful for Andy's guidance Ilfryn (talk) 12:01, 27 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Would a quick nod to Comte and Quetelet be in scope? I'll add a sentence with hyperlinks for perusal. AndySLord (talk) 12:54, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Ideas and Suggestions
Joe. I think, if allowed, the page should say being created by a volunteer group from the SCE Ilfryn (talk) 12:07, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Ilfryn, feel free to start this section on the CES. Perhaps a separate wikipedia page will be in order at some point AndySLord (talk) 23:50, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 18 August 2016
Draft:Cultural evolution → Cultural Evolution – Testing to see if draft now meets criteria for an article; opening up to wider community for contribution. AndySLord (talk) 17:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I've put a hold on the RM: it's not the proper procedure for moving drafts to mainspace. That's what AfC is for or, as experienced editors, we can just create it ourselves.
 * We'll need to request an admin to do a technical move, however, which I'll do now.
 * Also, the title should be Cultural evolution, per WP:NCCAPS (Wikipedia doesn't use title case). Joe Roe (talk) 17:53, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Missing reference
Rist 1980 is cited in the text, but we don't have a full reference for it. Can anyone supply one? Joe Roe (talk) 18:39, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Merge
Continuing from Talk:Cultural evolution (disambiguation) which suggested merging between Cultural evolution and Cultural selection theory.

I have emphasised a distinction that Cultural evolution is moving towards an academic discipline that incorporates many views including as Cultural selection theory. This article might be seen as looking at the history of the discipline and the principle arguments and questions that it addresses (with links of course). I'll also add a section on the CE society, though this might merit a page in itself at some point.AndySLord (talk) 08:51, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Lead
I have some time to work on this again. The first issue for me is the introductory paragraph. The material now labelled Philosophical basis was originally intended to introduce the entire article -- i.e., both theories of progress and populational theories of change. The new introduction only refers to the latter and also repeats some of the information under Philosophical basis. If people don't want the Philosophical basis material as the introduction (too long perhaps), I could relabel it "Alternative meanings of cultural evolution." But then we should modify the introduction to reflect the entire article and remove the repetitions. I would also move the Essentialism and Aristotle's natural state model under the Theories of development or progress section. Does anyone have any objections to me doing so? Paul J McLaughlin (talk) 01:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I would prefer to stick with the current lead (which is actually the original one, restored). Lead sections on Wikipedia are more of an abstract than an introduction, so repetition is what we're after, and should start with a concise and accessible definition of the subject (see MOS:LEAD). I moved the passage that is now under Philosophical basis there precisely because it was more of an introduction than a Wikipedia-style lead.
 * The issue of covering both "Neo-Darwinian" cultural evolution and theories of progress more broadly perhaps need a broader discussion. Personally I'd say the latter shouldn't be a focus of this article, since theories of progress are already discussed quite extensively in other articles (e.g. sociocultural evolution), and I understood that the scope of this article was a more contemporary understanding of cultural evolution, as promoted by the CES. Joe Roe (talk) 01:28, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'm happy with your explanation of the lead if that is the convention. But I thought we had the issue of the scope of the article settled (I explicitly raised it both within the email group and above in the talk section). It is the only reason I took the time to put the material in on essentialism etc. If you are going to define the page to focus on contemporary theories then it should definitely be taken out. I will perhaps contribute something to a section on organizational ecology at some point. Paul J McLaughlin (talk) 02:04, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well I'm aware there's been a lot of discussion about the scope and I certainly don't have the last word. It's something that will probably have to be resolved down the line when the many articles on related subjects are merged. Either way, I don't think you should remove all that content! Joe Roe (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I shall be at the Cultrual Evolution conference in Germany next week. It would seem like a good time to re-think about the scope of the entry.AndySLord (talk) 12:22, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Confusing definitions
The lead contains two definitions of cultural evolution (CE). According to the first one, CE is a theory of change. According to the second one, CE is a process of change (of "culture", according to a very specific, somewhat idiosyncratic – and, I think, not very relevant – definition of "culture"). So what is CE, a theory or a process? --Lambiam 19:37, 19 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Both. This does make it rather difficult to write about. –&#8239;Joe (talk) 10:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It remains confusing (at least, to me). In biology, evolution is a process; there are several theories of biological evolution, of which Darwinism is the best known and also (with some additions – the theory itself is evolving) by far the leading theory. Considering the term cultural evolution as referring to a theory, should we interpret this as one specific theory, or as a class of competing theories that potentially contradict each other? It is confusing to read that cultural evolution was "historically also known as sociocultural evolution", suggesting that the latter is an older term for the former that has fallen into disuse, while the article Sociocultural evolution treats this as a field of study that is very much alive today. So what is the relation between the concepts referred to by these terms?  --Lambiam 19:30, 28 February 2023 (UTC)