Dear Dr. Qwerty,
==================================================================
*** IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS ***
==================================================================
Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for commentary
and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new Online Commentary Proposal
System at the following URL:
http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/commentary/commproposal?authordir=Mesoudi-020…
* If you only wish to suggest potential commentators, please ignore prompts to
submit a proposal with expertise information.
* If you experience technical difficulties, please email bbs(a)bbsonline.org.
NOTE: Commentators must be BBS Associates, or suggested by a BBS Associate. If you are
not a BBS Associate, please follow the instructions linked below:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/associnst.html
** Please respond to this Call no later than December 5, 2005 **
==================================================================
CALL FOR COMMENTATORS
==================================================================
Below is a link to the forthcoming BBS target article
"Towards a unified science of cultural evolution"
by
Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, and Kevin N. Laland
This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open
Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the
biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.
The Calls are sent to 10,000 BBS Associates, so there is no expectation
(indeed, it would be calamitous) that each recipient should comment on
every occasion!
Please DO NOT prepare a commentary unless you eventually receive a formal
invitation, indicating that it was possible to include your name on the
final list, which is constructed so as to balance areas of expertise and
frequency of prior commentaries in BBS.
To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this
article, an electronic draft is retrievable at the URL that follows the
abstract and keywords below.
=======================================================================
*** TARGET ARTICLE INFORMATION ***
=======================================================================
TITLE: Towards a unified science of cultural evolution
AUTHORS: Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten, and Kevin N. Laland
ABSTRACT: We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties,
and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental
features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is
tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal sub-disciplines
of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential
corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within
anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with the macroevolutionary methods
of systematics, paleobiology and biogeography, while mathematical models derived from
population genetics have been successfully developed to study cultural microevolution.
Much potential exists for experimental simulations and field studies of cultural
microevolution, where there are opportunities to borrow further methods and hypotheses
from biology. Potential also exists for the cultural equivalent of molecular genetics in
social cognitive neuroscience, although many fundamental issues have yet to be
resolved. It is argued that studying culture within a unifying evolutionary framework has
the potential to integrate a number of separate disciplines within the social sciences.
KEYWORDS: Cultural Anthropology; Cultural Evolution; Cultural Transmission; Culture;
Evolution; Evolutionary Archaeology; Evolutionary Biology; Gene-Culture Coevolution;
Memes; Social Learning
FULL TEXT:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Mesoudi-02092005/Referees/
==================================================================
*** IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS ***
==================================================================
Please DO NOT respond to this email. If you wish to submit a proposal for
commentary and/or suggest potential commentators, please go to the new
Online Commentary Proposal System at the following URL:
http://www.bbsonline.org/perl/commentary/commproposal?authordir=Mesoudi-020…
* If you only wish to suggest potential commentators, please ignore prompts to
submit a proposal with expertise information.
* If you experience technical difficulties, please email bbs(a)bbsonline.org.
NOTE: Commentators must be BBS Associates, or suggested by a BBS Associate. If you are
not a BBS Associate, please follow the instructions linked below:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Instructions/associnst.html
** Please respond to this Call no later than December 5, 2005 **
==================================================================
==================================================================
Barbara Finlay - Editor
Paul Bloom - Editor
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
bbs(a)bbsonline.org
http://www.bbsonline.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------