Biology Versus Culture.

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Analogies are often drawn between biological evolution and ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ evolution. I believe these analogies are seldom enlightening, and often misleading. There are too many major differences between culture and biology for the analogies to be useful. Notably:

1. In biological heredity an individual has a well-defined set of ‘ancestors’. Coefficients of relationship can be calculated, and genetic regressions and correlations estimated. In contrast, cultural traits can be transmitted between any number of biologically unrelated individuals - even (by means of writing and other media) between people widely separated in time and space.

2. With unimportant exceptions, biological heredity cannot transmit traits acquired during the lifetime of the individual, whereas cultural transmission frequently does.

3. The processes leading to variation in biological heredity - mutation, recombination, meiosis, etc - are unconscious and random, in the sense that they have no tendency to serve any ‘purpose’. (I am ignoring the possibilities of eugenics, artificial selection, genetic engineering, etc.) In contrast, cultural change and innovation are often conscious and aimed at achieving a goal. There appears to be nothing in cultural transmission closely analogous to the ‘randomising’ features of biological heredity, which are important for biological evolution. (I’m aware that in some areas, such as linguistics, attempts have been made to estimate the amount of ‘transmission error’, but this remains a vague and limited analogy to biological mutation.)

4. Individuals have no choice in receiving their biological inheritance, whereas people frequently do have a choice in deciding whether to accept some cultural trait.

5. In biology there is a distinction between the genotype, which contains inherited information, and the phenotype, which is the set of observable traits of the individual, and is not directly inherited. The genotype forms the basis for development of the phenotype, which varies according to ‘nurture’, but has a predictable correlation with the genotype. The phenotype can to some extent be changed by deliberate choice, whereas the genotype cannot (again, ignoring genetic engineering, etc.) By contrast, in culture it is not clear that the genotype-phenotype distinction is applicable at all. Ultimately, cultural behaviour must have some genetic basis, but this may be of a general, species-wide kind. The specific form taken by the culture of a society is only very loosely constrained, if at all, by the genetic basis, as cultural traits can be abandoned or modified almost without limit during the lifetime of an individual.

6. Cultural traits are often specific to certain ethnic or social groups. Because of this it is often argued (or assumed) that in cultural evolution the group, rather than the individual, is the unit of evolution by natural selection. This would entail that groups have a life-cycle of birth, reproduction, and death. But groups do not literally die (except in the rare case of total extinction), and they do not literally reproduce themselves. Also, unlike biological individuals, they may split, reunite, or merge with other groups.

7. In biology, most organisms have the capacity to produce many offspring, and there is considerable variance in reproductive success. This is a prerequisite for natural selection to operate. In culture, by contrast, even if social groups may sometimes in a loose sense reproduce (e.g. by forming colonies), the rate of ‘reproduction’ is very low, and has little variance. For example, there are nearly 200 recognised independent countries in the world, but it is doubtful if any of them can be said to have ‘reproduced’ during the last century (unless you count the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia as ‘reproduction’). Yet there has been immense cultural change in all of those countries during that period.

8. Even when social groups give rise to ‘offspring’ in the form of colonies or emigrant communities, these seldom closely resemble the ‘parents’; e.g. Singapore is formed mainly by people of Chinese origin, but in many respects it is different from China.

9. Biological individuals compete with each other for available resources, and genes compete with each other for possession of genetic ‘loci’. There is nothing closely analogous to this in cultural evolution. It is true that some cultural traits are incompatible with others - you cannot be a Muslim and a Roman Catholic - but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. It is therefore doubtful whether there is a ‘struggle for existence’ among most cultural traits.

10. Biological traits are usually adaptive for the individuals who possess them, in the sense that possession of the trait enhances their reproductive fitness. Genes producing traits that impair reproductive fitness will be eliminated by natural selection. In contrast, there is no reason to suppose that cultural traits (with some important exceptions, such as economic competition in a free market) are usually beneficial in any sense to the individuals or groups that possess them. (As this goes against a lot of sociological and anthropological dogma, I may come back to it in another note.) It is true that people usually believe that their customs (witchcraft, circumcision, sacrificing the first-born, etc) are beneficial, but people hold a lot of false beliefs.

I conclude that the differences between biological and cultural evolution are so great that analogies between them are usually worthless. In particular, I do not believe that cultural traits have been produced by any process closely resembling natural selection.

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000205.html

Valid points but, the analogies that are often used are body to body. A society is campared to a physical body, or a whole with many parts.

Culture affects physical traits in small ways that do affect evolution of the human body. Example left hand vs. right hand. In many societies left handed people are/were shuned/killed. Left handed people were considered evil. because their minority did not permit them the numbers to defend their right to live they were eliminated when possible and parents forced left handed kids to become right handed in order to "save them". I have no valid proof but, I would say that the cleansing that had been done in the past and still today most likely affected the number of left handed people today. That is only one tiny effect of culture a affecting evolution.

Natural selection doesn't necessarily have to equate with biological traits. Anything can be subsumed under the fact of evolution...as long as that particular something is conducive to survival. As kriswest pointed out, our cultural capital directly affects us... we prefer specific types of people. Has anyone carefully observed a professional swimmer? Or merely someone on a team? Their bodies are literally shaped to fit the mould of a social role.

Now the article did not claim that it was impossible for culture to shape individuals...what it said was:

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I do not believe that cultural traits have been produced by any process closely resembling natural selection.

...hm....there are no culturally based structures that have helped us survive? There are no "cultural units" that have been beneficial to survival?

A culture develops based upon wants, needs and terrain. A culture will filter out genes that cannot cope within. Governments enforce the filters. Governments would be one structure that answers your question