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Biology and Culture, Cultural Evolution, Cognition, and Group Selection w/ Peter Richerson
Hi, everybody! Today, I release an interview with Dr. Peter Richerson. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. He’s a biologist with interest in cultural evolution, animal social learning and mathematical models. He’s also the author of books like Culture and the Evolutionary Process, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, and The Origin and Evolution of Cultures, all written in collaboration with Dr. Robert Boyd.
In this episode, we talk about culture, cultural evolution, and gene-culture coevolution. We start off with a definition of culture and the relationship between biology and culture. Then, we talk about culture as a phenotype, how culture evolved, and the cognitive bases of it. We go through some of the main scientific approaches to culture and their drawbacks, including Leda Cosmides and John Tooby’s evoked culture, the sociobiologists and inclusive fitness, and Richard Dawkins’ memetics. We also refer to gene-culture coevolution, and how group selection work are the cultural and genetic levels.
Link to podcast version (Anchor): https://tinyurl.com/yy6a5pku
