This volume examines how evolutionary principles can help us understand the dynamics of culture while acknowledging the risks of their uncritical application. Drawing on perspectives from the philosophy and history of science, anthropology, archaeology, behavioural science, and evolutionary biology, it explores how ideas about evolution have shaped and at times distorted our understanding of human nature and cultural change. The book also shows how biosemiotics provides a promising framework for bridging biological and cultural perspectives.
The volume is organised into four parts. The first discusses the historical roots of evolutionary thinking and the conceptual assumptions that made it possible, as well as the dangers of ideological misuse of analogies between cultural and biological evolution. The second part examines how evolutionary ideas have influenced anthropology and archaeology, while the third addresses key theoretical perspectives to the study of cultural transmission and change, including the cognitive mechanisms involved. The final part focuses on biosemiotics and explores how meaning-making processes connect biological and cultural evolution.
The volume does not propose a single unified theory, instead the contributors engage in a dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, showing how the humanities and life sciences can mutually inform each other through shared attention to evolutionary and semiotic processes. The book combines theoretical reflection with a balanced presentation of key ideas, aiming to make complex ideas accessible to readers from a range of disciplines interested in cultural evolution, biosemiotics, and the interplay between biology and culture.
Introduction (Jan Havlíek & Jan Toman).- Part 1:The Human Condition and
Evolutionary Thought in the History of Ideas (Tomá Hermann).- .1. Progress
or Decline? The Evolution of Culture According to Some Ancient Thinkers
(Vojtch Hladký & Elika Fulínová).- 2: Breaking Through the Boundaries of
Time: Changing Modern Notions About the Age of Nature and Culture (Tomá
Hermann, Vojtch Hladký & Lucie Strnadová).- 3: The Evolutionary Utopia and a
Confusion of Discourses: Projecting Eugenic Para-Religious Visions onto Human
Future (Tomá Hermann, Michal V. imnek & Jan Musil).- 4: On the Monistic
and Dualistic Origins and the Development of Nature and Culture: Haeckel and
Ehrenfels (Lenka Ováková).- Part 2:Cultural Evolution and the Human
Sciences: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives (Radek Kundt).- 5:
Genes, Identity, and Material Culture: In Search of a Unifying Theory (Petr
Kvtina & Václav Hrní).- 6: Shifting Perceptions of the Greek Bronze Age:
From Simple Valuative Judgements Like Civilised or Barbaric to a
Comprehensive Implementation of the Archaeological Science (Tomá Aluík).-
7: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Perspectives in Research of Cultural and
Social Phenomena (Danijela Jerotijevi & Radek Kundt).- 8: Appreciating
Culture in Human Mating and Parenting Research: The Reproductive Functions of
Religious Systems (Terezie Dvoáková, Eva Kundtová Klocová & Radek Kundt).-
Part 3: Culture from the Perspective of Evolutionary Behavioural Science (Jan
Havlíek).- 9: Culture: Uniquely Human? (Jitka Lindová).- 10: Memetics: Rise,
Fall, and Reconsideration (Jaroslav Flegr & Jan Toman).- 11: Cultural
Attraction as One of the Pillars of Cultural Evolution (Pavlína Hillerová &
Petr Tureek).- 12: Cultures as Species: Tree Thinking and the Phylogenetic
Approach in Linguistics, Archaeology, and Anthropology (Pavel Duda).- 13:
Human Cumulative Culture: Bridging Cognition and Population Dynamics (Jan
Havlíek).- Part 4: Biosemiotic Reflections upon the Relationships Between
Nature and Culture (Jana vorcová).- 14: The Role of Sociomorphic Modelling
in the Perception of Nature (Petr Hampl: Mirroring Nature).- 15:
Stability-Based Sorting in Cultural Evolution: Macroevolutionary Phenomena as
a Model for Explaining Cultural Dynamics (Jan Toman).- 16: The Past Lives on
With Us: Epigenetics as a Link Between Cultural and Biological Evolution
(Jana vorcová & Karel Kleisner).- 17: Abiosphere and Biosphere: An
Individual, a Community, a Culture (Anton Marko).- 18: Reflections on
Analogies Between Cultural and Biological Evolution: Contribution to the
Discussion from the Perspective of Historical Sciences (Jan Horský).
Jan Toman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences, Faculty of Science, Charles University. His research focuses on macroevolutionary and theoretical biological topics, encompassing the evolution of evolvability, stability-based sorting and its role in evolving systems, as well as cultural evolution and biosemiotics. He is also interested in the history of biological concepts and science outreach. Jan Havlíek is a Full Professor at the Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University. His main research interests concern the evolutionary aspects of human social perception, particularly within the theoretical frameworks of signalling theory, sexual selection, and dual inheritance theory. He has published over 170 papers and co-edited a textbook on animal behaviour.
Tomá Hermann is a researcher at the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences, Faculty of Science, Charles University. His research focuses on intellectual history and the history of sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Czech and Central European context, with particular emphasis on the life sciences, philosophy, and historiography. He is a long-standing member of the Society for the History of Sciences and Technology of the Czech Republic and serves as Editor-in-Chief of its scientific journal Djiny vd a techniky History of Sciences and Technology.
Radek Kundt is a researcher at LEVYNA Laboratory for the Experimental Research of Religion, Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University. Interested in the origins of ritual, he argues that collective ritual evolved as a complex signalling system facilitating mutualistic cooperation. Combining methods from experimental anthropology and experimental psychology, he researched the effects of religious priming on prosocial and moral behaviour, drawing on several years of laboratory and field experience in the Czech Republic and Mauritius.
Jana vorcová is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of Sciences, Faculty of Science, Charles University. She teaches theoretical and evolutionary biology, and her research focuses on non-mechanistic approaches to living systems within biophilosophy. Her interests also include non-genetic evolutionary variation and inheritance, organismal agency, and various levels of memory in living systems.
