ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
position that ultimately succeeded? Sticky business here, this culture (and risky to
speak about it in general terms); the closer one looks, culture seems akin to mise-enscène with multiple layers, actors, and props (or is it the endlessly reflecting mirrors
of mise en abîme?). While Darwin might not have meant the word to carry the force
with which it strikes many readers today, he does after all use the word savages
(frequently in Descent). In spite of his genius of observation and single-mindedness
was Darwin a product of his class and culture? For this reviewer, the key question is
whether one can escape influence from culture at all (or, as he has debated elsewhere,
at what point is circumstance self?).
All of which proves Mesoudi’s claim about the Darwinian components (variation,
competition, inheritance) of culture. And Mesoudi’s theme is well taken: cultural
evolution is not ladder-like and not progressive (as Spencer argued); societies do not
progress up a series of steps to a pinnacle (since there is no top). Rather, there are
variations within a population that through natural selection cause change over time
(where one culture then borrows from an earlier version of itself or from another
culture). And this brings us, Mesoudi sees, to the key question as to whether or not the
transmission of culture is particulate. (Again this reviewer makes reference to the
Turner and Whitehead paper.) Biological inheritance is on the micro level and is not,
on the surface, a blending of traits – an individual gets only one version of any gene,
not a blend of it (and Mesoudi provides examples, such as the color of eyes or fur).
According to Mesoudi, cultural traits, however, can blend (with the example of
language), or not (since on a neural level aspects of culture, such as sounds in a
language, can be discrete). This leads us to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (Darwin’s
predecessor who espoused use/disuse and the inheritance of acquired characteristics).
Mesoudi says that cultural evolution is Lamarckian – we do not acquire neural activity
from others but copy behavior and then modify it before passing it on. In a nutshell,
according to Mesoudi, cultural evolution is Darwinian, just not neo-Darwinian (the
later espousing the mathematical and genetic models of the evolutionary synthesis in
the 1920s/30s).
S