Cultural Diversity & The Darwin Wallace Pattern pdf

Cultural Diversity & The Darwin Wallace Pattern

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The emergence of culture and language is viewed as a “major transition” in the evolution of species. I seek to investigate how culture builds upon the Darwin-Wallace pattern of constant or near constant slight variations across individual organisms in species. The emergence of culture and language in the evolution of the human species increases the number and diversity of characteristics across individual organisms in the human species. I discuss how this is partly comparable to the Darwin-Wallace pattern of constant or near constant variations across individual organisms in species, and I also discuss how culture and cultural patterns differ from the Darwin-Wallace pattern: 1) cultural variation and cultural diversity sometimes involve slight differences across individuals and groups, and this is partly comparable to the Darwin-Wallace pattern of constant or near constant slight variations across individual organisms; however, 2) cultural variation and cultural diversity also may involve large cultural differences and even chasms of cultural differences across linguistic groups, ethnic groups, and societal groups; 3) culture also may reduce cultural differences and cultural chasms across groups, as in the diffusion and spread of gods, goddesses, and God, music, the arts, science, philosophy, technology, spoken and written languages

that replace earlier languages or that are translated between existing languages; 4) innovation and creativity that involve large differences or “macromutations” in cultural and technological productivity and “progress.” Since Darwin stated that the Darwin-Wallace pattern implied gradualism, and that the theory of natural selection implied gradualism (“natura non facit saltum”), I also discuss the contrast between the gradual nature of evolution implied by Darwin’s theory, and the potentially exponential nature of material culture or technological growth.

• Creator/s: Christopher Portosa Stevens
• Book Topics/Themes: evolution, culture, Darwin, Wallace, exponential growth

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