How Universities “Select Against” Cultural Evolution
The more I read about the history of cultural evolution (spanning 150+ years), the more clear it is that misaligned incentives for career advancement in universities have held back its progress as a field for at least half a century.
The first major work in the field was Darwin’s “Descent of Man” published in 1871. Biology didn’t get its foundations on solid ground until the 1930’s — with the creation of mathematical tools for population genetics that merged Mendelian heredity with natural selection.
Major advances were made throughout the mid-20th Century in animal behavior studies, genetics, development, and classification… including the creation of ecology as a higher-level field of synthesis.
The 1960’s and 70’s saw the publication of major works in social, cultural, and biological integration — Sociobiology being a solid contributor at this time, alongside The Extended Phenotype and related books.
Works in the sociology and philosophy of science then began to show how the “level of selection” for cultural evolutionary studies was the research group. This combined with academic departments as filters for university admissions set up a pattern of fragmentation.
Territorial battles among academics ensued and the synthesis of knowledge across social, biological, and ecological sciences (let alone humanities) became impossible within academic institutions.
And now people like me must work outside the pathologies of institutional evolution for universities and research laboratories to advance the synthesis that is so strongly incentivized against at present.
Fascinating, eh?
This is why I am now establishing the School for Applied Cultural Evolution outside the academic world — where it can be designed around the selective structures and professional practices that empower the integration of knowledge and its translation into practice.
Onward, fellow humans.
Joe Brewer is the executive director of the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution. Get involved by signing up for our newsletter and consider making a donation to support our work.
