>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/23/00 11:55AM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
> The main question
> that occurred to me is why don't the authors consider such things
> as digging a burrow or migrating to avoid cold as genetically
> based instincts, as essentially phenotypical expression of
> genotype. Isn't there such a thing as instinctive animal
> BEHAVIOR ? If so isn't a form of phenotype ( the paper mentions
> Dawkins' "extended phenotype")? Finally, why do they treat it as
> if it is incipient animal culture ? Are they saying that child
> animals learn , for example, seasonal migration by imitating
> parents , and that it is not genetically based instinct ?
Probably I'm missing something here, but how does this affect the concept of
gene-culture coevolution, assuming you're right?
(((((((((((((((
CB: I'm not sure. Why are they writing about non-human ecology in the first part of a
paper on human ecology ? They seem to be saying that animals have a little culture
too, and therefore gene-culture coevolution occurs not just among humans. And I guess
the human occurrence of it is just a continuation of what happens with other species.
But , assuming I am right, non-human gene-culture coevolution doesn't exist. So, why
are they discussing it ?
>
> CB: Are they saying this web construction or the subsequent
> camouflage, protection and communication behaviours are
> instintive or incipiently "cultural" ? Are they passed on
> through genes or as a "tradition" ? I would assume the former.
I'm sure you're right, but again, I don't see this disqualifies the notion
of coevolution.
((((((((((((((
CB: Many anthropologists have long thought that human cultural evolution has been
intertwined with proto-human and human biological evolution. The school of anthro I
"grew up " in at the University of Michigan founded by Leslie A. White as a
neo-Morganian ( Lewis Henry Morgan, author of _Ancient Society_, basis for Engels
_Origin_) is an Evolution and Culture school of thought. The authors of the paper we
are discussing have Marshall Sahlins' _The Uses and Abuses of Biology_ in their
bibliography, but the one they want is _Evolution and Culture_ (circa 1960) by Sahlins
and Service. It is a theoretical culmination of the evolution and culture school,
saturated with examination of culture as an adaptive ecological mechanism. This
coevolution seems a rediscovery of the whole Whitean school - without mentioning it.
Another authority on this is Yehudi Cohen, editor of the reader _Man (sic) in
Adaptation_ : the cultural present ( and another reader, "the cultural past".)
(Chicago 1974). " a systematic overview of the biological, social and cultural
adaptations of man in his emergence and evolution. " Cohen is part of the ecological
school of anthro. Sure that's an old cite. but this is an old school of thought. White
started in the 1920's, founding the anthro department at Univ of Mich.
In his basic text, _Cultural Anthropology_ (Fifth edition, 1991, McGraw_Hill), Conrad
Kottak, who gave me my first theory class on all this, has Chapter 6"Cultural
Evolution and Adaptive Strategies" , summarizing what I am telling you above. The
following chapters of the book are basically more specifics of the outline in Chapter
6.
On agricultural methods creating standing bodies of water in West Africa wherein
mosquitos breed, thereby making heterozygous sickle cell advantageous, biological
anthropologist Frank Livingstone wrote a paper on this in 1958. I read the paper like
all undergrads at U of Mich. They cite Durham with an identical study in 1991.
In other words the authors misrepresent the facts of the history of the discipline of
anthropology when they say,
"2.1 Example 1: Hominid Evolution
Archeologists and anthropologists currently seek to reconstruct the
evolutionary history of modern humans from the fossil and molecular data, in
the context of standard evolutionary theory (Figure 1a). Since this theory
does not incorporate niche construction, it encourages the idea that human
evolution must have been directed solely by independent natural selection
pressures in human selective environments, that is by selection pressures
that have not been modified by niche construction...."
Coevolution seems true, but not at all a new idea. "Ecological anthropology" has
existed for decades, and it analyzes "niche construction" in humans in relation to
cultural and biological evolution and change. I literally have dozens of articles on
this.
> )))))))))
>
>
>
> Most cases of niche construction, however, do not involve the building of
> artefacts, but merely the selection or modification of habitats
> (Odling-Smee, 1988). For instance, many insects choose particular host
>
> ((((((((((((
>
> CB: They "choose" it ? Is this instinctive choice or "conscious" choice ?
>
> (((((((((
I'm sure the word choice doesn't imply cognition, in context.
((((((((((((
CB: So, why is this discussed in a paper on culture ? There is a qualitative
difference between human culture and the animal ecological heritages or whatever they
call it, that the authors discuss. A beaver's dam is not like a cultural artifact,
even if the next generation of beavars uses it.
)))))))))))
> All organisms constantly interact with their local environments, and they
> constantly change them by doing so. If, in each generation, populations of
> organisms only modify their local environment idiosyncratically, or
> inconsistently, then there will be no modification of natural selection
> pressures, and hence, no significant evolutionary consequence.
> If, however,
> in each generation, each organism repeatedly changes its own
> environment in
> the same way, perhaps because each individual inherits the same genes
> causing it to do so, then the result may be a modification of natural
> selection.
>
> (((((((((((((
>
> CB: Why do they say "perhaps" ? Isn't this definitely so. And
> isn't this an important point in a paper that compares
> instinctive behavior and cultural behavior ?
>
> I can understand that the authors are pointing to ecological
> inheritance as structures external to the organisms's bodies and
> thereby different than the bodily phenotype. But the behaviors
> that generate the physical structures that persist to a next
> generation or influence the upbringing of infant animals here are
> INSTINCTIVE behaviors, not learned as a culture or tradition.
>
> clip
I think the whole thrust of the paper is to show how forms of co-operation
and altruism can emerge in a grounded way, out of the evolutionary logic
itself, ie as *necessary* adaptations which optimise survivability of the
genotype (the "selfish genes"). This is much better than just an appeal to
good behaviour!
(((((((((((((((((
CB: I agree with this. Human culture is grounded in the enormous sociality or
communality of the human species. This sociality or communality is humans' greatest
biological adaptive advantage compared with all other species. So, selfish ,
individualist behavior undermines the most critical adaptive advantage of our species.
But it is exactly this area in which other species do not have the same thing as
humans. So, that's why I questioned the discussion of animal "culture-like" ( but not
really cultural) behaviors in this paper. Or at least without make the qualitative
distinction between them.
> ((((((((((((((((((
>
> CB: Seems to me that human culture still has a unique status with
> respect to its capacity to modify natural selection.
Absolutely: 'The hive is at bottom one bee', as Marx said.
Mark
(((((((((
CB: Glad you gave us this paper though.
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