Darwinismo y ciencias sociales: una interpretación evolucionista de la cultura

Laureano Castro Nogueira, Miguel Ángel Toro

Resumen


Darwinism and social sciences: an evolutionist interpretation of the social sciences.

Darwin’s attempt to analyze human culture and behavior from a naturalistic point of view was not well received by most of the thinkers responsible for the foundations of the standard model in social sciences. However, in the last years the Darwinian proposal has been taking again seriously in several disciplines trying to examine culture from an evolutionary perspective. From these attempts the dual inheritance theory of the anthropologists R. Boyd and P. Richerson is the most promising in bringing together the sociological explanations and the Darwinian approach. In this article, we analyze the basic elements of their model, tracking the origin of the conflict between their ideas and those of the father of sociology E. Durkheim. In the final part of the article, we criticize this model and present an alternative one based in what we have called assessor social learning.

KEY WORDS. Key words. Cultural transmission, imitation, Homo suadens, assessor, cultural evolution, dual inheritance theory

 


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