The Evolution of Norms

Abstract

Over the past century and a half, we have made enormous progress in assembling a coherent picture of genetic evolution—that is, changes in the pools of genetic information possessed by populations, the genetic differentiation of populations (speciation) (see summaries in [1,2]), and the application of that understanding to the physical evolution of Homo sapiens and its forebears ([3]; e.g., [4,5]). But human beings, in addition to being products of biological evolution, are— vastly more than any other organisms— also products of a process of “cultural evolution.” Cultural evolution consists of changes in the nongenetic information stored in brains, stories, songs, books, computer disks, and the like. Despite some important first steps, no integrated picture of the process of cultural evolution that has the explanatory power of the theory of genetic evolution has yet emerged.