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Giorgio Bertini
Research Professor on society, culture, art, cognition, critical thinking, intelligence, creativity, neuroscience, autopoiesis, self-organization, complexity, systems, networks, rhizomes, leadership, sustainability, thinkers, futures ++
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Category Archives: Cultural evolution
The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve
The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Human evolution, Sociocultural evolution
Tagged cultural evolution, human evolution, Sociocultural evolution
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Did social cognition evolve by cultural group selection?
Cognitive gadgets puts forward an ambitious claim: language, mindreading, and imitation evolved by cultural group selection. Defending this claim requires more than Heyes’ spirited and effective critique of nativist claims. The latest human “cognitive gadgets,” such as literacy, did not spread through cultural group selection. … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Social cognition
Tagged cultural evolution, social cognition
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The Cultural Evolution of Thinking
Cognitive gadgets are distinctively human cognitive mechanisms – such as imitation, mind reading, and language – that have been shaped by cultural rather than genetic evolution. New gadgets emerge, not by genetic mutation, but by innovations in cognitive development; they are specialised cognitive … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Thinking
Tagged cultural evolution, thinking
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Narrative, cognition, and cultural evolution
Drawing on non-Darwinian cultural-evolutionary approaches, the paper develops a broad, non-representational perspective on narrative, necessary to account for the narrative “ubiquity” hypothesis. It considers narrativity as a feature of intelligent behaviour and as a formative principle of symbolic representation (“narrative proclivity”). Th e narrative … Continue reading
Posted in Cognition, Cultural evolution, Sociocultural evolution
Tagged cognition, cultural evolution, Sociocultural evolution
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Cumulative Cultural Evolution within Evolving Population Structures
Our species’ ecological success is supported by our ability to selectively learn beneficial social information, resulting in the accumulation of innovations over time. Population size affects the social information available to subsequent generations of learners and constrains cumulative culture. Population … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Sociocultural evolution
Tagged cultural evolution, Sociocultural evolution
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Why Humanist Values Will Prevail: A Cultural Evolutionary View
Our geopolitical world seems increasingly unstable, and some see this instability as a threat to Humanist values. But I’m optimistic that these values will ultimately prevail. Before I justify that optimism, let me clarify what I mean by Humanist values. … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Humanist
Tagged cultural evolution, Humanist
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Cultural Evolution, Insight, and Fundamental Theories of Consciousness
To answer the question of whether or not evolution is (or could be) conscious, we must first consider what makes something conscious. Approaches to consciousness can be divided into two camps. Reductionist approaches attempt to explain how consciousness could arise … Continue reading
Posted in Consciousness, Cultural evolution
Tagged consciousness, cultural evolution
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How Culture Makes Us Smarter
Cumulative culture gives us knowledge and tools far beyond our individual powers. Cumulative culture doesn’t just gift our species technology that none of us could have invented; it literally makes us smarter. The products of cumulative culture include not only … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Cultural intelligence, Culture, Intelligence
Tagged cultural evolution, cultural intelligence, culture, intelligence
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The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language
We propose a novel account for the emergence of human language syntax. Like many evolutionary innovations, language arose from the adventitious combination of two pre-existing, simpler systems that had been evolved for other functional tasks. The first system, Type E(xpression), … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Evolution, Language
Tagged cultural evolution, evolution, language
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Why does culture sometimes evolve via sudden bursts of innovation?
Human beings inherit many genetic traits directly from their parents. However, cultural traits – tools, beliefs and behaviors that are transmitted by learning – can be passed on not only by parents but also teachers and peers. Many animals have … Continue reading
Posted in Cultural evolution, Innovation
Tagged cultural evolution, innovation
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