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| | Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process |  | Authors: Charles J. Lumsden, Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $37.50
Buy Used: $5.74
You Save: $31.76 (85%)
Collectible (1) from $50.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1352394
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 442
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.9
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0674344758
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.4
EAN: 9780674344754
ASIN: 0674344758
Publication Date: May 4, 1981
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Brilliant ideas, flawed analysis March 7, 1999
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
It is difficult to decide whether to praise this book for its (at the time) innovative and novel approach to gene-culture coevolution or criticize it for its endless slurry of ad hoc models with groundless or unspecified assumptions. One can do both. The idea they present, that there is a positive feedback mechanism between biological and cultural evolution, is by far the best working hypothesis for why human society "took off" after millenea of paleolithic stasis. The theory central to the book is that genetic constraints shape culture, which in turn becomes the cultural environment in which an individual's Darwinian fitness is determined, forming a positive feedback between cultural and evolutionary change. This posits a specific mechanism for the role of genetic change in cultural evolution, going far beyond the intellectually vacuous "resolution" of the nature-nurture debate by those who say "it's both." However, none of the models they present can be regarded as anything but mathematical playthings, in few cases are any of the variables or parameters quantities that can actually be measured or therefore tested. Often, it is not entirely clear what the dependent variables in the system correspond to in nature. Worse still, some of the models are completely ad hoc: first positing a dynamical behavior, then presenting an apparently arbitrary dynamical system which exhibits the property as "proof" of the theory. In essence, an uneven work, but one which I think will be at the foundation for further work in the area, at least as a basis for concepts and theory (provided the specifics are taken with a large grain of salt).
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