Cultural Science: A Natural History of Stories, Demes, Knowledge and Innovation

Description

Cultural Science introduces a new way of thinking about culture. Adopting an evolutionary and systems approach, the authors argue that culture is the population-wide source of newness and innovation; it faces the future, not the past. Its chief characteristic is the formation of groups or ‘demes’ (organised and productive subpopulation; ‘demos’). Demes are the means for creating, distributing and growing knowledge. However, such groups are competitive and knowledge-systems are adversarial. Starting from a rereading of Darwinian evolutionary theory, the book utilises multidisciplinary resources: Raymond Williams’s ‘culture is ordinary’ approach; evolutionary science (e.g. Mark Pagel and Herbert Gintis); semiotics (Yuri Lotman); and economic theory (from Schumpeter to McCloskey). Successive chapters argue that: –Culture and knowledge need to be understood from an externalist (‘linked brains’) perspective, rather than through the lens of individual behaviour; –Demes are created by culture, especially storytelling, which in turn constitutes both politics and economics; –The clash of systems – including demes – is productive of newness, meaningfulness and successful reproduction of culture; –Contemporary urban culture and citizenship can best be explained by investigating how culture is used, and how newness and innovation emerge from unstable and contested boundaries between different meaning systems; –The evolution of culture is a process of technologically enabled ‘demic concentration’ of knowledge, across overlapping meaning-systems or semiospheres; a process where the number of demes accessible to any individual has increased at an accelerating rate, resulting in new problems of scale and coordination for cultural science to address. The book argues for interdisciplinary ‘consilience’, linking evolutionary and complexity theory in the natural sciences, economics and anthropology in the social sciences, and cultural, communication and media studies in the humanities and creative arts. It describes what is needed for a new 'modern synthesis' for the cultural sciences. It combines analytical and historical methods, to provide a framework for a general reconceptualisation of the theory of culture – one that is focused not on its political or customary aspects but rather its evolutionary significance as a generator of newness and innovation. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Intro 1 Curiously Parallel: The Nature of Culture How each member ought to act Curiously parallel Certain favoured words: Social Darwinism? Our only organon Nature versus culture? Caught knapping Part 1: Culture Makes Groups 2 Externalism: Identity (‘Me’ is ‘We’) Self-creation Communication creates individuals Conciliating culture and knowledge: The cultural science approach The 10 Recommendments Linked brains and externalized knowledge 3 Demes: Universal-Adversarial Groupishness (‘We’ vs. ‘They’) The creation of the self Gallipoli – The creation of national character Granddads – On not having a story . . . Göbekli Tepe – V. Gordon Childe and revolution Gotcha? – The big guns of storytelling . . . Fall silent? Digital stories to constitute a new polity 4 Malvoisine: Bad Neighbours Big cooperation – Universal or adversarial? Big culture Malvoisine Systemic violence What happens when culture gets really big? 5 Citizens: Demic Concentration Creates Knowledge What is a citizen? Rational citizen theory The evolutionary puzzle of citizenship Creative citizenship Health care versus racketeering? Artists, consumers and the clash of systems Part 2: Groups Make Knowledge 6 Meaningfulness: The Growth of Knowledge What evolves? Something very much like knowledge Meaning and language; meaningfulness and culture Knowledge evolves The cultural evolution of gentlemen (a short but instructive digression) The nature of culture and beyond biosemiotics Meaningfulness and marriageability Contesting cultural order 7 Newness: Innovation The Janus face of culture The dynamic scale of cultural change Randomness makes variety Consciousness makes creativity Demes make newness The economic sociology of newness: ‘Irritating impact’ 8 Waste: Reproductive Success On the efficiency of cultural production Trillions and trillions Cultural efficiency Children and waste Wasted words? The childish invention of culture 9 Extinction: Resilience and Ossification A prosocial groupish animal, honed by conflict and extinction How to protect valuable things What is cultural extinction? Conquest as cooperation Rules and ossification Great cities as generators of semiosis Complex culture Outro 10 A Natural History of Demic Concentration The use of culture in society Implications A natural history of demic concentration How culture works Acknowledgements References Index