Mind the gap: a more evolutionarily plausible role for technical reasoning in cumulative technological culture

Pain, Ross; Brown, Rachael L.

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02894-8

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…formulating an 'overall picture of the natural world that science […] seems to be giving us' (Godfrey- Smith, 2001: 284). Important contributions include Kim Sterelny's (2012Sterelny's ( , 2021 work aimed at outlining the natural history of human beings and their hominin ancestors, and work making sense of the striking increase in technological complexity of hominins (Pain & Brown, 2021). This marks a promising shift that some have described in terms of movement from a constrained form of behavioural innovation to one that is 'open-ended' (Borg et al, 2022;Charbonneau, 2015), perhaps in a way analogous to the open-ended possibilities afforded by genetic recombination (Charbonneau, 2016).…”

Section: Developments In the Philosophy Of Science For Cultural Evolu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research focused on distinct spans of time within this epochal stretch has enabled data collection from the material record to respond to quite different questions about cultural evolutionary processes. Inspired by behavioural studies on animals, evolutionary archaeological research focusing on an early phase up to 500,000 years ago (Shennan, 2008) is dominated by the distinction of primate and hominin cultural capacities (Tennie et al, 2017), long-lasting technical traditions and convergent evolution in technologies (O'Brien et al, 2018), and the development of simple stages of communication and cooperation (Gärdenfors & Högberg, 2017). For a middle phase between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago, the research focus shifts to the study of evidence for the increasing complexity of technical expressions (Lombard & Haidle, 2012) and the necessity of advanced forms of cultural transmission (Stolarczyk & Schmidt, 2018), group structures and the advent of ritual behaviour (Dapschauskas et al, 2022).…”

Section: Field Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges

Nichols,

Charbonneau,

Chellappoo

et al. 2024

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The rapid growth of cultural evolutionary science, its expansion into numerous fields, its use of diverse methods, and several conceptual problems have outpaced corollary developments in theory and philosophy of science. This has led to concern, exemplified in results from a recent survey conducted with members of the Cultural Evolution Society, that the field lacks ‘knowledge synthesis’, is poorly supported by ‘theory’, has an ambiguous relation to biological evolution, and uses key terms (e.g. ‘culture’, ‘social learning’, ‘cumulative culture’) in ways that hamper operationalization in models, experiments, and field studies. Though numerous review papers in the field represent and categorize its empirical findings, the field's theoretical challenges receive less critical attention even though challenges of a theoretical or conceptual nature underlie most of the problems identified by Cultural Evolution Society members. Guided by the heterogeneous ‘grand challenges’ emergent in this survey, this paper restates those challenges and adopts an organizational style requisite to discussion of them. The paper's goal is to contribute to increasing conceptual clarity and theoretical discernment around the most pressing challenges facing the field of cultural evolutionary science. It will be of most interest to cultural evolutionary scientists, theoreticians, philosophers of science, and interdisciplinary researchers.

show abstract

Section: Developments In the Philosophy Of Science For Cultural Evolu...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Field Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges

Nichols,

Charbonneau,

Chellappoo

et al. 2024

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Here we add prospective cognition and rehearsal. These Causal cognition cannot, however, be separated from the social cognition that scaffolds cumulative technological culture (Pain & Brown 2021). As causal cognition becomes more advanced, the more it becomes dependent on theory of mind (ToM) (this connection and the orders of ToM are explained in SOM table 1, and in Lombard & Gärdenfors 2021).…”

Section: Our Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minds on Fire: Cognitive Aspects of Early Firemaking and the Possible Inventors of Firemaking Kits

Lombard¹,

Gärdenfors²

2023

CAJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thus far, most researchers have focused on the cognition of fire use, but few have explored the cognition of firemaking. With this contribution we analyse aspects of the two main hunter-gatherer firemaking techniques—the strike-a-light and the manual fire-drill—in terms of causal, social and prospective reasoning. Based on geographic distribution, archaeological and ethnographic information, as well as our cognitive interpretation of strike-a-light firemaking, we suggest that this technique may well have been invented by Neanderthal populations in Eurasia. Fire-drills, on the other hand, represent a rudimentary form of a symbiotic technology, which requires more elaborate prospective and causal reasoning skills. This firemaking technology may have been invented by different Homo sapiens groups roaming the African savanna before populating the rest of the globe, where fire-drills remain the most-used hunter-gatherer firemaking technique.

show abstract

Human socio-technical evolution through the lens of an abstracted-wheel experiment: A critical look at a micro-society laboratory study

Högberg,

Lombard,

Högberg

et al. 2024

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Micro-society experimental setups are increasingly used to infer aspects of human behavioural evolution. A key part of human society today is our dependence on, and use of, technology–whether simple (such as a knife) or complex (such as the technology that underpins AI). Previously, two groups of researchers used an abstracted-wheel experiment to explore the evolution of human technical behaviour, reaching fundamentally different outcomes. Whereas one group saw their results as indicating social learning only (void of causal understanding), the other inferred non-social technical reasoning as part of human technical behaviour. Here we report on the third generation of the micro-society abstracted-wheel experiment. We argue that causal reasoning is inseparable from both social learning and technical reasoning, and that these traits probably co-evolved into the current human socio-technical niche. Based on our outcomes, we present a critical assessment of what this experiment may (or may not) reveal about the evolution of human technical behaviour. We show that the abstracted-wheel experiment reflects behavioural output only, instead of testing for cognition. It is therefore limited in its ability to inform on aspects of human cognitive evolution, but it can provide useful insights into the interrelatedness of social learning, technical reasoning, and causal reasoning. Such a co-evolutionary insight has the potential to inform on aspects of human socio-technical evolution throughout the Pleistocene.

show abstract

Mind the gap: a more evolutionarily plausible role for technical reasoning in cumulative technological culture

Cited by 3 publications

References 59 publications

Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges

Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges

Minds on Fire: Cognitive Aspects of Early Firemaking and the Possible Inventors of Firemaking Kits

Human socio-technical evolution through the lens of an abstracted-wheel experiment: A critical look at a micro-society laboratory study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About