‘The cultural animal’

Logan Chipkin

Nature-nuture, hoe genen/erfelijkheid, gedrag en cultuur beïnvloeden vind ik een erg interessant onderwerp. 'The Ape that Understood the Universe. How the Mind and Culture Evolve' van Steve Stewart-Williams past in mijn leeslint over dit intrigerende thema, dat ik al eerder schetste in het log: 'Who's in charge? You or your brain?'
Naar het boek van Stewart-Williams heb ik geluisterd. Een korte samenvatting knip ik uit de review van G.T. Dempsey in Geography Realm.

This is an engaging, intriguing, and ultimately most satisfying look into what the human mind can do and how it got that way.  Like all animals, we human beings have come to where we are through natural selection, body and mind.  On the latter, the normative difference between us and the other animals is that our culture is cumulative.   Ten thousand or so years ago, the pinnacle of chimpanzee culture was using twigs to extract termites from termite mounds; today, the pinnacle of chimpanzee culture is using twigs to extract termites from termite mounds, while we humans have progressed from Stone Age technology to Space Age technology.   The author, a university professor of psychology, is not claiming that this cultural evolution results from natural selection operating on genes, but, rather, it results from natural selection operating on memes: ‘ideas, beliefs, practices, tools, and anything else that gets passed on via social interaction.’  He believes that we may be at a unique moment in human history where it would be possible, for the first time ever, to sketch out an explanation for human behavior and human culture, both accurate and satisfying.