Is Cultural Evolution Evolution

Masarykova univerzita
Filozofická fakulta
Ústav religionistiky
DIZERTAČNÍ PRÁCE
2014 Radek Kundt

Masarykova univerzita
Filozofická fakulta
Ústav religionistiky
Radek Kundt
Is Cultural Evolution Evolution?

Some Methodological Problems of Application of Evolutionary
Theory on Culture, with Special Reference to Religion
Dizertační práce
Školitel: doc. PhDr. David Václavík, Ph.D.
2014
Prohlašuji, že jsem tuto dizertační práci vypracoval
samostatně s využitím uvedených pramenů a literatury.
………………………………………
Mgr. et Mgr. Radek Kundt
V Brně dne 24. ledna 2014
iii
CONTENTS
CZECH ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ v
ENGLISH ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................... vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................................................................................vii
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1
CLASSICAL CULTURAL EVOLUTIONISM ..................................................................... 11
Classical Cultural Evolutionism and the Origins of Religious Studies .................. 12
Critique of Classical Cultural Evolutionism ............................................................... 26
CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL EVOLUTIONISM .......................................................... 33

i) Group Selection Accounts ....................................................................................... 34
Group Selection Accounts in Religious Studies ................................................... 53
Critical Analysis of Group Selection Accounts .................................................... 58
ii) Dual Inheritance Accounts ...................................................................................... 70
Dual Inheritance Accounts in Religious Studies ................................................. 81
Critical Analysis of Dual Inheritance Accounts .................................................. 86
iii) Memetic Accounts ................................................................................................... 91
Memetic Accounts in Religious Studies ............................................................. 101
Critical Analysis of Memetic Accounts .............................................................. 104
EVOLUTIONARY STUDY OF CULTURE WITHOUT CULTURAL EVOLUTION ..... 111

EWCE Approach in Religious Studies ....................................................................... 124
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 133

REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 145
iv
CZECH ABSTRACT
Existuje celá řada evolučních přístupů ke studiu kultury. Klíčovou charakteristikou
jednoho z nich je využívání kulturní evoluce, tj. skutečného autonomního
kumulativního procesu evoluce kultury. Pro zhodnocení přínosu konceptu kulturní
evoluce tato dizertační práce porovnává, jak je s pojmem evoluce zacházeno
v kulturně evolučních teoriích s tím, jak je tento pojem používán v neodarwinistické
evoluční teorii. Při stručném nastínění historického pozadí nakládání s kulturní
evolucí v religionistice vytyčuji hlavní námitky vznesené proti klasickému
kulturnímu evolucionismu: zejména propojování evoluce s hodnotově zaneseným
konceptem pokroku nebo nabízení neověřitelných „vyprávěnek.“
Představovaná analýza se skládá z posouzení toho, jak se moderním teoriím
kulturní evoluce daří naplňovat všechny základní požadavky neodarwinistického
přírodního výběru. Zaměřuje se na v současnosti nejvlivnější rámce, tj. na teorie
pracující s konceptem skupinového výběru, Teorii dvojí dědičnosti a memetiku.
Výsledkem mého kritického zhodnocení je, že z různých zásadních důvodů tato
pojednání nejsou legitimními rozšířeními neodarwinistické teorie, ale spíše špatnými
metaforami a zavádějícími analogiemi, které v nejlepším případě nepřidávají mnoho
ke konvenčním pojetím dějin založeným na příčině a následku. Mezi důvody, proč
tato pojetí pojem evoluce spíše pokřivují, než že by ho rozpracovávaly, patří různé
druhy porušování základních principů neodarwinistické teorie, jakými jsou jednotka
výběru (neexistence jednotek schopných produkovat věrné kopie sebe samých),
selekce (nenáhodná variace/záměrná selekce; neurčitelný dopad na fitness)
a dědičnost (lamarckovská dědičnost).
Závěrečná část práce představuje alternativní evoluční přístup ke studiu
kultury (včetně náboženství), která netvrdí, že by neodarwinistické evoluční principy
měly být aplikovatelné mimo biologickou doménu, ani nepoužívá skutečnou
kulturní evoluci. Přesto jde o hluboce informativní přístup zahrnující jak formování
kulturní změny biologickou evolucí, tak i zpětnou vazbu, ve které kultura působí na
gen (evoluce skrze kulturu).
Klíčová slova: náboženství, kulturní evoluce, koevoluce genu a kultury, skupinový

výběr, Teorie dvojí dědičnosti, memetika, neodarwinismus, Univerzální
darwinismus, kognitivní věda o náboženství, kognitivní religionistika, přírodní
výběr, adaptace, vedlejší produkt
v
ENGLISH ABSTRACT
There are a number of evolutionary approaches to the study of culture. A key
characteristic of one of them is utilizing cultural evolution, i.e., the genuine
autonomous cumulative process of the evolution of culture. This dissertation compares
the notion of evolution in cultural evolutionary theories and neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory to determine the value of the concept of cultural evolution. I lay
out a short historical background of cultural evolution in the study of religion, where
I pinpoint major objections raised against classical cultural evolutionism; mainly the
linking of evolution with a value-based concept of progress or supplying only “just-
so stories.”
My analysis consists of evaluating how modern theories of cultural evolution
fit all the core requirements of neo-Darwinian natural selection. It focuses on group
selection accounts, Dual Inheritance Theory, and memetics, as currently the most
influential frameworks. The outcome of my critical assessment is that for various
fundamental reasons, these accounts are not legitimate extensions of neo-Darwinian
theory, but rather poor metaphors and misleading analogies which at best do not
add much to conventional cause-and-effect concepts of history. Among the reasons
why they distort rather than elaborate the notion of evolution, are various violations
of the fundamental principles of neo-Darwinian theory, such as the unit of selection
(no true replicators), selection (non-random variation/intentional selection; intangible
fitness consequences), and heritability (Lamarckian inheritance).
The final section of this dissertation introduces an alternative evolutionary
approach for the study of culture (including religion) which does not claim the
principles of neo-Darwinian evolution should be applicable outside the biological
domain, nor does it employ genuine cultural evolution. Yet it is a profoundly
informative approach incorporating both the biological evolutionary history shaping
cultural change, and the feedback-loop in which culture retroactively acts on the
gene (evolution through culture).
Keywords: religion, cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution, group selection,

Dual Inheritance Theory, memetics, neo-Darwinism, Universal Darwinism,
Cognitive Science of Religion, natural selection, adaptation, by-product
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to my doctoral supervisor David Václavík for instilling the discipline
that got the ball rolling. Our conversations proved an abundant source of much
needed guidance. I also thank to Jakub Cigán for commenting on early drafts and
relentlessly sharing dreadful early morning shifts, the only time we could devote to
writing, during our joint field research in Indian Ocean.
For the contribution they have made, deserve an appreciation Aleš Chalupa
and Iva Doležalová, who read through substantial parts of the manuscript and
offered an insightful and encouraging feedback. I would like to express my gratitude
also for the truly generous help with the English version of various chapters. I owe
thanks to Zdeňka Čermáková, Petr Čermák, Martin Kulhavý, E. Thomas Lawson,
Luther H. Martin, Paul Reddish, John Shaver, Irena Šmérková, Jana Šmídová, and
Penny Tok, for kindly taking the time.
Finally, I wish to thank to my wonderful wife Eva, who did all the
aforementioned and more, and who, on the top of that, had to put up with me while
I have been writing. We have spent hours in inspiring discussions. She cared, tended
tirelessly to my needs and I am deeply grateful that she stayed even when I have
been most moody and unbearable.
Radek Kundt
January 2014, Brno
vii
INTRODUCTION
My goal in this dissertation is to compare the notion of evolution in cultural
evolutionary theories and in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, to thus determine
the value of the notion of “cultural evolution.” I do this with special regard to the
evolution of religion rather than to the evolution of culture in general.
My analysis is not about repeating objections raised against the theories of
classical cultural evolutionists (mainly tying the notion of evolution to that of
“progress”) and then to say that contemporary1 cultural evolutionists make the same
mistakes, as they do not (which is true for a majority of present-day accounts).
Instead, I use the first chapter to describe those objections, how destructive they are
for those who do not avoid them, and in due course I lay out a short historical
background of the usage of cultural evolution in the scientific study of religion. In the
process, while steering clear of any such associations of the notion of evolution in my
project, I also set up the minimal requirements that theories need to meet in order to
qualify as contemporary cultural evolutionists worthy of analysis for the scientific
study of religion.
My analysis, on the contrary, consists of evaluating how contemporary
theories of cultural evolution fit all the core requirements of neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory of natural selection after they pass the objections to classical
cultural evolution. The purpose of this step is to show to what degree it is
a legitimate reasonable extension of this theory, thus making it applicable to the
study of cultural phenomena (e.g., religious phenomena), or if it is just a metaphor or
1I use the adjective “contemporary” instead of “modern” here deliberately. There are a vast number of
authors who are commonly classified as modern cultural evolutionists. Unfortunately, due to the
objectives and scope of this dissertation (i.e., focus on the theories with a significant influence in
current Religious Studies), I have to omit well-known figures like V. Gordon Childe, Leslie A. White,
Julian H. Steward, Elman R. Service, early Marshall D. Sahlins, and Marvin Harris entirely from my
analysis.
-1-
analogy for what might better be called “history,” “cultural change,” “development”
or “historical development” of cultural phenomena (including religious phenomena).
And if this metaphor/analogy is not in the end incorrect, misleading and confusing.
In other words, I will try to determine whether the adjective “cultural” in cultural
evolution elaborates the notion of evolution or distorts it.
What form will the critical analysis take? First, I will introduce each of the
contemporary approaches to the application of Darwinian evolutionary theory of
natural selection to explanation of cultural phenomena that do require genuine
processes of cultural evolution. This will concern describing the three most
influential theories, i.e. group selection accounts, Dual Inheritance Theory and
memetics. The introduction will detail a classification of positions of their most
significant authors by specifying their hypotheses, a systematisation of their basic
arguments for the transfer of Darwinian evolutionary theory to the socio-cultural
domain, unfolding their theoretical presuppositions, and elucidating the methods
they use. After this introduction, I will show the specifics of how is each theory
applied when explaining religious phenomena. Consequently, I will critically assess
to what extent those applications are complying with all fundamental principles of
neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection (phenotypic variation, heritability, and
fitness consequences).
After the critical analysis of the most influential theories of cultural evolution
that are influential in Religious Studies through Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), 2
I will also introduce an alternate neo-Darwinian evolutionary study of cultural
phenomena, which in its basic form does not employ genuine processes of cultural
evolution. Due to the lack of better term, I call this the Evolutionary without Cultural
2 My goal is not to define CSR, to address its internal subdivisions, nor to analyze its short but
nonetheless rich history. Even though there are many specialisations within CSR, and only a few of
them are explicitly dedicated to evolutionary theorizing, evolution is such a fundamental theme
within its Framework, that we would have to search hard to find a single CSR work that does not
mention it in one way or the other. I am well aware of how much of a simplication it is to use CSR in
this monolithic fashion, yet I see it as unavoidable on this level of generalization, which is necessary
for accomplishing the goals of this thesis.
-2-
Evolution (EWCE) approach. I consider it a moderate, “safe” and very enriching
application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory on study of culture. In the chapter
“Evolutionary Study of Culture without Cultural Evolution,” I will identify its
strengths and weaknesses, and then I will evaluate its ability to explain religious
phenomena.
First, it is necessary to emphasize how important for the intention of this
analysis it is to highlight the prefix “neo” in the “neo-Darwinian” denotation. Since
Darwin’s era, the Darwinian principles have undergone great advancements and
refinements. The principal idea is still the same and its originality, influence and
strength in the scientific community is indisputably credited to Darwin. In some
principles, though, such as heritability or variation bearers (genes), the shifts are so
enormous that they ended up miles away from Darwin’s original ideas. To capture
this distinction, modern biology speaks rather of the neo-Darwinian natural selection
(or neo-Darwinian evolution/synthesis). It is not by accident that those authors who
try to promote new extensions of theory of natural selection refer back to Darwin,
often quoting his works and ideas.3 This return to the past offers them not only
affiliation with the glory of the famous founding figure’s name, but it allows also
access to a more “primitive” form of the theory that provides broader space for
creative work within those basic principles.
Their argument is then as follows: Darwin brought generally valid formal
principles of natural selection, which are, due to their formality, to a certain degree
content-free, and it is up to theorists to shape them according to the proprieties of the
phenomena they study. This argument leads to a position, where Darwin’s theory is
used as a meta-framework applicable to all sorts of phenomena beside biological
ones (i.e., Generalized Darwinism), supported by the fact that Darwin himself
implied the possibility of this applicability when he embarked on the speculative
3References in this respect can be found in the work of representatives of all three chosen main cases
of contemporary theories of cultural evolution. In group selection accounts, see for example D. S.
Wilson (2002: 5, 9-11, 18, 125), in dual inheritance accounts P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd (2005: 239, 253-
255), in memetics S. Blackmore (1999: 10-11, 56).
-3-
usage of his own theory to explain social phenomena. It is then dependent on the
taste of authors in how extensively they want to use this meta-framework. The
broadest assumed form can is a metaphysical position (Universal Darwinism or
Darwinian monism).4
This argument loses its ground whenever we comprehend the theory of
natural selection in a strictly scientific definitional framework of modern neo-
Darwinian theory, refined to current form in biology. That is, evolution as it is
conceived in the domain of explanation of particular kinds of phenomena, ruled by
particular kinds of laws, which are specific to this domain; the domain for which the
theory was originally designated for by Darwin (the domain of organic speciation).
This theory, though truly groundbreaking in its foundations, is strictly defined by the
neo-Darwinian limitations and in fact needed an immense labour to be set right, and
its flaws and errors needed to be reconciled (among others Lamarckism5). Neo-
Darwinism is in simple terms synonymous with the term modern biological synthesis
which is an integration of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with Mendelian
population genetics. The tendency of those advocating Generalised Darwinism is
similar to an ambition of employing the principles deduced from Bohr’s atomic
theory and using it in current explanations of chemical reactions, and not taking into
account the advancement of quantum mechanics that showed some parts of Bohr’s
ideas to be naive or even proved them false.
4 The concept of Generalized Darwinism was developed by G. M. Hodgson (2005). Amongst the most
famous advocates and proponents of Universal Darwinism/Darwinian monism, are: evolutionary
biologist R. Dawkins (1983), philosopher D. C. Dennett (1995), or psychologist S. Blackmore (1999). For
more details on Generalized Darwinism or the Universal Darwinism/Darwinian monism see the next
chapter.
5 Lamarckism is a good example as it illustrates the differences between the two definitional
frameworks. Neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection in biology gradually arrived at rejection of

Lamarckian principle of heritability; the possibility of the direct transmission of “characteristics of an
individual gained during their lifetime to an offspring.” In contrast, theories of cultural evolution use
Lamarckism as one of the possible mechanisms of transmission. What is a mistake for one side –
a mistake that needed to be eliminated to emancipate the theory from its speculative captivity – is
employed by the other side as a legitimate solution, enabling in some cases quotations from Darwin.
Which begs the question: how appropriate is it to brand these theories of cultural evolution with the
adjective “neo-Darwinian.”
-4-
When encountering these two positions in the literature, it is clear that each
theory interprets natural selection quite differently. This would not pose too big
a problem if the differences were reflected by both positions. 6 But what I argue is
that, among other things, these positions have unequal standing, and only one party
profits from this definitional confusion. While the modern biological neo-Darwinian
stance is narrower and more precise, having a century long history of recognition
and success, the meta-framework stance is again and again discredited and falsified;
one of few things it has to fall on is the success of its biological “relative.” The meta-
framework theories are therefore constantly trying to legitimize their endeavour by
referring (or being connected) to the success of their “biological form.” The problem
of this attempt at legitimization is that those from the opposite side of the aisle do not
see themselves as a subspecies of the same species, but rather much more –
a completely independent species.
As I aspire to assess the transfer of a functional scientific theory from one
domain to another, and not engage in science-transcending philosophical arguments
or legitimacy politics of the meta-framework, I choose (from the very beginning of
my work) the only functional version of the theory of natural selection as a default
definition (i.e., modern neo-Darwinian biological natural selection). This choice sets
the limitations of natural selection that cannot be abandoned as it comprises its own
definitional framework. As with other limitations, these constrain the theory, tie it
down, and set boundaries to its aspirations, but as it happens with any successful
scientific theory, also natural selection owes its enormous success to them. My thesis,
in a nutshell, is as follows: anything that does not comply with those limitations is
not better explained just by comparisons to the natural selection. Alternatively:
natural selection is useful for explaining specific type of processes, however, it might
not be applicable for explaining other types of processes, or it might not add
anything useful to those explanatory approaches suitable.
6 They would always openly present those differences.
-5-
Within the limitations which define neo-Darwinian natural selection, I include
according to the standard approach (see Williams, 1966; 1992)7 the following points:
(1) There are units in the system that are able to create their own copies (replicators). 8
(2) In ideal conditions within the system, their number grows exponentially. (3) If
resources are limited, the replicators compete for them with each other in their
struggle for survival. (4) When copying some replicators suffer random errors. (5) If
it happens that some of these errors increase the rate of replication, the error
accumulates and starts to dominate the population.9 The basis of natural selection
thus consists in increasing (successful entity) or decreasing (unsuccessful entity) the
number of units in the population over generations. To make the scope of the
definition as clear as possible, it is still necessary to elaborate on the implications of
points (4) and (5), as they may not be obvious at first sight, and yet are absolutely
crucial.
First to the point (4): The randomness of errors (mutations) being truly
random is extremely important for the theory, because if it were not so, it would
7 For in-text citations and format of the reference list, I use APA Style (established by American
Psychological Association).
8 One of the important features of the standard neo-Darwinian definition of natural selection,
compared to previous versions of the definition is the pressure to diminish the concept of “fitness” in
favour of such concepts as “replicators” and “vehicles” that help (helped) to refine the definition of
natural selection by clarifying the units of selection. In standard neo-Darwinian biological evolution
the “replicators” are genes (DNA information). Genes create high fidelity copies of themselves (they
duplicate themselves). In the end, it is the genes which harvest the advantages of adaptations. Genes
are the ultimate goal/beneficiaries of selective pressure. Thanks to their duplication, replicators outlive
their vehicles, which grow in complexity from physical DNA molecules to individual organisms - in
case of genes over millions of years. Theoretically, for Darwinian natural selection to occur, only
replicators are essential; vehicles, unlike replicators, are not a necessary requirement. As I will show in
the relevant chapters, for most theories of cultural evolution (evolution of culture, that is, from my
perspective a metaphorical usage of natural selection in the domain of cultural phenomena, even for,
and especially for, group selection accounts - whether genetic/biological or cultural) is in this regard
typical in that they concentrate on (return to) the elaboration of the concept of “fitness.” Instead of
accentuating the survival and reproduction of replicators, they emphasize the fitness of various
vehicles.
9
In the words of R. Dawkins (2012): “[…] replicators qualifying as successful will – on average, over
many instantiations and many generations – tend to find themselves associated with good
phenotypes, while replicators defined as unsuccessful will find themselves statistically associated with
bad phenotypes. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ phenotypes are defined as good and bad at passing on the
replicators responsible for them.”
-6-
change the theory’s whole point (image as well as consequences). What does
randomness mean here? Mutations cannot anticipate what will be their effect in the
environment where they occur. On their level, a deliberate planning or influencing of
the outcome is non-existent.10 If this randomness is breached, the theory of natural
selection would be wrong in its conclusion about the illusoriness of design in nature,
as it would actually exist. And in this sense, it might not be just the scarecrow of
creationism, where the mutations that benefit the organism are planned and guided
by higher intelligent designer. Even Lamarckism, already mentioned, suffices, where
the organisms themselves can influence changes according to their needs, respond
and adapt to selective pressures and pass characteristics acquired during life on to
succeeding generations. In such a case, design enters the process at the level of will
and effort of individual organisms.
Besides the fact that random means random, it means also mechanistic. The
theory of natural selection is mechanistic, i.e. the dynamics of changes in a given
population can be mathematically deduced from the previous state of the population.
The result is determined solely on the basis of the number of copies of the replicators
in specific (finite/bounded) populations. Any other criterion of “success” which
would compromise this mechanistic criterion, compromises at the same time the
entire theory. Especially problematic from this point of view are arbitrary
anthropocentric perspectives (power, influence), or, more specifically for our
purposes, aspects which are culturally dependent (good/correct/beautiful). But most
10Even though I am using the term “to anticipate” which might imply intentionality, I by no means
suggest that. On the contrary, it is a figure of speech I use to stress how unintentional, involuntary and
mechanistic the process is. S. Pinker (2012) uses for example “to be blind to the effects.” Genes take
some action (in the end result, phenotypic) to ensure/maximise their survival but it does not mean
intentional, planned, foreseen, conscious decision-making that comes to mind. These connotations
come from everyday conversations where the word connects to agents. I use it only due to the lack of
more suitable terms, which forces me to resort to this misleading metaphor and the only solution is to
explicitly draw attention to it.
-7-
devastating for the whole theory are those aspects that set an end-state/objective of
the process in advance.11
Now to point (5): The surprising effect of accumulation of several generations
of replications has a double impact. First, it results in an illusion of design in the
natural world.12 Thanks to the more rapid replication, the error started to replicate
more frequently and after several generations of replications, they give an
impression of being designed for more effective replication. In reality, it was just the
accumulated error that successfully replicated (see Pinker, 2012). Second, the theory
of natural selection without replicators would be superfluous. That is to say, it only
enriches our explanations where it shows what such repetitive accumulation of
replications can “unexpectedly” cause after few generations. In the absence of this
“special cumulative effect,” we would not need a special theory to explain a given
process. Ordinary explanations based on cause and effect would suffice, as in any
other single event.
This last mentioned feature is very important, because among other things, it
allows us to easily distinguish between the theory of evolution based on natural
selection and evolutionary theories based on other concepts, which not necessarily
but very often, originated before the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural
selection. In addition to connecting development to normative concepts of progress
(progressivist approaches), these “other” evolutionary theories, are often
characterized by the fact that the development they talk about is explainable by
common causal terminology and, consequently, to talk in this sense of evolution is
superfluous. Mostly it is development in a sense of ecological succession, where an
organism changes its environment and the changed environment in turn influences
11 This is one of the fundamental ideological errors that may be found in an evolutionary study of
anything. I will highlight this problem later on as an error of connecting evolution with teleology in
the list of fundamental ideological errors of classical cultural evolutionists.
12 Revealing its illusoriness (i.e. of purposefulness/design) is often seen as the biggest contribution of
Darwin’s theory of evolution in general (i.e. it provides an elegant answer to the age-old question of
why nature seems so full of design without it having to postulate the scientifically troublesome
intelligent designer).
-8-
the organism. Moreover, in human societies and cultures it concerns the ways in
which people shape the environment in which they live, by their “non-random”13
decisions and how the new environment, in turn, puts pressure on new kinds of
decisions. Such “development” is however not evolution; it is actually only the
effects of external causes of changes and their consequences that explain everything
in the process completely and sufficiently.14 I see this point as a persistent problem in
the more current variants of cultural evolutionary approaches; whose effort to get rid
of the value-charged criteria bore fruit in the form of abandoning the concept of the
unilinear human progress.
I consider the limitations of the theory of natural selection as decisive for its
definition. It is a theory with great explanatory power, and as long as we move
within these boundaries, it also has great potential for explaining numerous
phenomena. Because of these qualities it becomes very attractive for anyone who
deals with cumulative development within any open systems. Its contribution,
however, is dependent on these limitations, and if we are not able to respect all of
them, when we apply them to “our” open system, the result will always be
counterproductive. In its tempting “boundless” application, it is therefore
appropriate to be wary of errors, which I divided into two basic types. In the first
type all limitations of the theory’s definition are responsibly adhered to, but it will be
applied to a process which it cannot be applied to. As a result, the process is forcibly
adjusted in feeble attempt to fit it within the theory of natural selection. In this
distortion, law-like principles and normative assumptions are imposed by which the
process does not operate. And afterwards, it is argued that the process includes what
13 “Non-random” in the sense, that there are non-random variations that are a priori blind to their
effects on environments, as in the case of genetic mutations.
14 A good example are the popular “ethnical periods” of L. H. Morgan (1974 [1877]) which combine
evolutionary sequences of savagery, barbarism and civilization with levels of technological

development. Stages of social organization, from bands, through tribes and chiefdoms to State, are
here explained by the increasing need for more complex political systems that arise from the
increasing number and density of the population, often supplemented by other causal environmental
and economic contexts.
-9-
it in fact does not.15 The “right” (undistorted) theory is applied to the “wrong”
(distorted) process. Illustratively, S. Pinker (2012) also aptly points to this type of
misconduct:
“There is no end to the possibilities for pointlessly redescribing ordinary cause-and-

effect sequences using the verbiage of natural selection. Cities have more old buildings
made of stone than of wood because of the process of edifice selection. Cars today are
equipped with steel-belted radials because they outcompeted polyester-belted tires in a
process of tire selection. Touch-tone phones have prevailed over dial phones because of
their competitive advantages in telephone selection. And so on. Sure, some things last
longer or do better in competition than others because they have traits that help them last
longer or compete more effectively. But unless the traits arose from multiple iterations of
copying of random errors in a finite pool of replicators, the theory of natural selection
adds nothing to ordinary cause and effect.”
In the second type of error, the theory instead of the process is distorted. That is, the
theory is forcibly adjusted to fit the process we try to explain until it is not the neo-
Darwinian theory of natural selection any more. And in ill-motivated attempt to use
the theory at all costs we argue that it contains something it does not.16 We apply the
“wrong” (distorted) theory on the “right” (undistorted) process.
15 E.g., cultural replicators with high fidelity replication in the case of memetic accounts (for an
extended argument see chapter “Memetic Accounts”).
16 For example, the Lamarckian type of heritability of acquired characteristics that forms an essential
component of both group selection accounts in question and dual inheritance accounts (for an
extended argument see chapters “Group Selection Accounts” and “Dual Inheritance Accounts”).
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CLASSICAL CULTURAL EVOLUTIONISM

The current presence of cultural evolutionism in the field of Religious Studies is not
new. On the contrary, it has its own long and significant history, during which its
value has been both glorified and condemned. This chapter has two main objectives,
which are closely tied to this bipolarity, as well as one to another. The first is to show
what kind of context (in terms of history of the field) the contemprary cultural
evolutionism enters in the scientific study of religion. The second goal is to set the
minimum qualification that must be met by the contemporary theory of cultural
evolution to be taken seriously and to be discussed in a subsequent critical analysis.
The path I choose to achieve both is not a chronological listing of all the ideas
of cultural evolutionists and their opponents since their emergence, but rather an
analysis of the main arguments of both sides (gloryfying/condemning), which
I consider to be still prominent and which are particularly crucial for the main
analytical goal of my thesis. This path is also reflected in the structure of the chapter,
where the first part is dedicated to the evaluation of the benefits of classical
evolutionists, especially the founding contribution of evolutionary theory for the
birth of Religious Studies as an autonomous scientific discipline. Only afterwards do
I evaluate both the objections that were later raised against them, and objections that
could have been, in my view, brought up.
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Classical Cultural Evolutionism

and the Origins of Religious Studies
The fact that cultural evolutionism (in its various forms) formed one of the strongest
influences at the beginning of the emergence of our discipline is commonly
recognized, a view contested by few if any (see Capps, 1995: 53-87 or Cartwright,
2001).
Some theorists go further in this assessment, claiming that it was directly
Darwinism, which allowed the discipline to emerge (e.g., J. E. Harrison (1909) and R. R.
Marett (1912)). Often these authors were “practicing” cultural evolutionists, or they
favoured cultural evolutionism (interestingly, in some cases, the assessment took
place shortly after the establishment of the “influence”).
While I agree with the effort to “rehabilitate” the importance of Darwinism
and appreciate its contribution to the establishment of Religious Studies, this
statement is not accurate and requires, in my opinion, to be refined in two ways.
First, it was not just Darwinism, but Generalized Darwinism (for some even
extending to Universal Darwinism/Darwinian monism, e.g., R. R. Marett) which
vastly contributed to the creation of cultural evolutionary theories (Darwinism itself
was designed for biological domains of organic speciation and its influence on
classical cultural evolutionism, in comparison to other evolutionisms, such as
Spencer’s, was rather ideological). At the same time we cannot avoid the fact that one
form of Generalized Darwinism was the infamous Social Darwinism. Second, the
influence of other evolutionists on cultural evolutionism was enormous (especially
H. Spencer’s as well as other progressivists’).17 More elaborate argument for this
claim, as well as definitions of fundamental concepts mentioned above (Generalized
17 Some authors, such as E. J. Sharpe (1986 [1975]: 47-71), are aware of the necessary
extension/refinement, similar to the one I am pointing out, and they use the slogan-like expressions of
“Darwinism makes it possible” only as a rhetorical element in their chapter titles, trying to draw
attention to, for some perhaps, an unpopular opinion.
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Darwinism, Universal Darwinism/Darwinian monism), will be gradually introduced
in the next section.
First overviews and evaluations of the surging wave of interest in the scientific
study of religion were created at the turn of the century, from the pens of authors
such as C. P. Tiele (1897) and L. H. Jordan (1905). In the extent and scope of the
appreciation of the impact of Darwinism in this respect stand out, later on, two
already mentioned scholars of religion, J. E. Harrison and R. R. Marett. They both see
Darwinism as the initial impulse and the strongest driving force that enabled the
creation of scientific study of religion.
In 1909, British classicist and scholar of Greek religion J. E. Harrison, in her
contribution “The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion” to the volume of
essays Darwin and Modern Science, commemorating the centenary of the birth of C. R.
Darwin and 50th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, uses very
clear words when saying (1909: 494): “The title of my paper might well have been
‘the creation by Darwinism of the scientific study of religions,’ but that I feared to
mar my tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration.” Note that her
expression stresses not only that she sees the influence of Darwinism as a special one
when compared to other influences, in the sense that it represents the foundation of
the discipline, but she also stresses the adjective scientific as opposed to study in
general.
R. R. Marett takes this argument even further when he states that it was
Darwin’s theory of evolution that provided the basis for all scholarship and,
therefore, also the newly institutionalized fields of anthropology and comparative
religion can be seen as Darwin’s children (see 1912: 8). According to him, the study of
the origins of religion that Darwinism produced, was what distinguished the
anthropology of religion from theology and as such it was the defining characteristics
of the scientific study of religion during its earliest phase (see 1971 [1920]: 143-167).18
18Similar works (e.g., J. E. Carpenter (1913), A. S. Geden (1922), E. O. James (1934 and 1954)), show
how far the dominance of darwinizing cultural evolutionism extended in Britain. Still in the 1940’s in
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As I have briefly indicated, even though I agree with the effort to appreciate
the benefits of Darwinism for the foundation of the scientific study of religion, on the
other hand, I argue that for a more complete and accurate assessment of that
influence, it is necessary to see its impact in context; that is, as part of the broader
stream of classical cultural evolutionism. Yet when the picture of classical cultural
evolutionism is completed in this way I would be confident enough to argue that it
really was this classical cultural evolutionism that provided the most powerful
impetus for the foundation of the scientific study of religion as such, even when
compared to other “rival” currents.19 Mainly thanks to formulating a big theory of
the work summarizing the current state of the phenomenology of religion by E. Hirschmann (1940),
there is not a single author of Anglo-American origin.
19 When the remark about the origins of Religious Studies is limited to a single person, the name we
encounter most frequently is that of F. M. Müller. The reason behind this association is that, due to
certain factors he offers a simple answer to a very difficult question. The origins of the social sciences
emerging in the second half of the 19th century are invariably vague. This fuzziness does not consist
of a lack of access to information of a fundamental nature, but rather from a decision as to which
information we determine to be essential and why. Are we going to choose, for example, the form of
written statements, manifestos, various pamphlets, public lectures, conferences, published scientific
studies, chapters of books, books, establishment of associations and scholarly societies, major conflicts
in university departments etc., or the creation of the first departments and positions bearing the name
the majority of the world’s departments for the Study of religions is still unable to agree upon even
today? Moreover, Comparative Religion was, like other social sciences, born from multiple sources,
each of which in its own discourse, claimed a scientific basis and to decide in this pluralism usually
means to evaluate one’s work in terms of criteria arising later in development. I would argue that one
of the factors leading to F. M. Müller being such a popular choice for the post of the founding father of
Religious Studies is, among other things, his public demonstration of a clear non-theological
programme in the study of religion, which makes him an easy and seemingly indisputable alternative.
The picture however turns out to be more complicated when we look into fulfilment of this program
with real content. F. M. Müller was an active and enthusiastic supporter of the foundation of a “new
science” of religion. His most famous public lectures and performances include those from the Royal
Institute (19th February 1870) or later Gifford Lectures (1889-1893). His pioneering Chips from a German
Workshop: Essays on the Science of Religion (1876 [1867]) and Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873),
published lectures from the Royal Institute, are usually mentioned as establishing “charters” of
Comparative Religion. He was its open pursuer and defending champion in public life, but he laid its
foundations in theory by how he talked about it rather than by actually doing it. His contribution was
similarly evaluated at the turn of the century by L. H. Jordan (1905: 522): “[…] Max Müller did
infinitely more for this new discipline as one of its Prophets and Pioneers than he was ever privileged
to do for it as one of its Founders and Masters.” He outlined and planned it, but in the meantime, it
was built by others and in a different fashion. The same was also pointed out by C. P. Tiele in one of
the oldest accounts of the field in general (1897: 2), when he writes: “[his Introduction to the Science of
Religion] dealt with the preliminaries rather than with the results of the Science, and was an apology
for it more than an initiation of it.” Also the term F. M. Müller promoted for the science, “Science of
Religion”, did not, for various reasons, catch on in the Anglo-American environment where he
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religion, pointedly connected to and compatible with the scientific program of the
natural sciences which was strongly establishing itself, and therefore in many ways
offered an alternative to the theological theories of religion. 20 The following section is
devoted to clarifying what context I have in mind, namely how the classical cultural
evolutionism drew primarily on two inspirational sources, Generalized Darwinism
and universalistic progressivist evolutionary theories.
Darwinism was an integral and considerable component of mainstream
classical cultural evolutionism, but only in a specific form, and it certainly was not
the only source of inspiration for this stream. By a specific form, I mean the fact that
scholars of religion did not use the form of Darwinism applicable to a limited
biological domain, but a form of Darwinism characterized by extended applicability
to other areas of interest. For this form of Darwinism, I use the term Generalized
worked predominantly. It is paradoxical that the content that became a real foundation of the new
discipline, was brought on in the works of thinkers who never sought establishing a separate science
per se. Yet, in their treatises on the development of human thinking and behaviour, they devoted
unprecedented space to religion and created theories of religion still considered in today’s Religious
Studies as genuine and classic works of the discipline. I have in mind especially Darwinian
anthropologists of the first wave, such as Sir J. Lubbock, E. B. Tylor and A. Lang.
20 The specific components that characterize this program, include especially: (A) stipulation of
a unifying research goal, aptly specified in E. J. Sharpe’s words as (1986 [1975]: 25): “[d]iscerning the
origins, development and goals of each separate manifestation of the human spirit”; (B) introduction
of a uniform method how to achieve this goal, that is a comparative method (for a detailed
presentation see H. Balfour’s introduction to the well-known work of A. H. L. F. Pitt-Rivers (1906));
(C) “reign of law” (fascination by laws/law-like processes/behavioural patterns/mechanisms)
transferred to the socio-cultural domain; and (D) abandoning a static/inert image in favour of the
motion/progression and development. Previously, only doctrine (dogma, doctrine, theology,
mythology) was exclusively accentuated. In theological accounts, the interest revolved around truths
that are permanent and unchanging, and the only permissible development consisted of the
endeavour of trying again and again to approach and express those truths better. The first generation
of Darwinian anthropologists turns this approach upside down in the sense that they put
development/progression and, change and variation in the centre. Moreover, they saw it as a natural
component of religious thought, no longer brought down by orthodoxy. We must understand this
shift in the context of the fundamental revolutionary idea of “continuity of life/the absence of breaks”
(natura non facit saltus) that C. R. Darwin brought to both science, and philosophical/religious debates.
According to J. E. Harrison The Origin of Species owes its revolutionary character in biology precisely to
this idea. In other words, cultural evolutionism alters perspective in such a way that the contemporary
scholars started to lose interest in the current “final product,” when studying religion, and instead
began to focus on the process of genesis and development. It is possible to illustrate this shift in a note
by J. E. Harrison, who said (1909: 499): “the problem before the modern investigator is, not to
determine the essence and definition of religion but to inquire how religious phenomena, religious
ideas and practices arose.”
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Darwinism, by which I mean any attempt to apply the core Darwinian principles of
variation, selection and replication21 outside of the original biological domain. If we
generalize Darwinism when trying to explain social evolution, the result would be
called social Darwinism. If we generalize Darwinism when trying to explain cultural
evolution the result would be called cultural Darwinism. This could be done for
virtually any other domain,22 so it can be concluded that if we generalize Darwinism
to such an extent that we can use it when trying to explain any open and evolving
system, the result might be called universal Darwinism.23
The main aspiration of theoretically elaborated Generalized Darwinism is that
you do not use Darwinian principles as a mere analogy. On the contrary, it is based
on the assumption that it is in theory possible, and therefore should be in every case
required, that its application shows how all basic Darwinian principles operate
within the system it tries to explain. In other words you need to be able to show how
processes specific to the system24 are still governed by basic Darwinian principles.
They need to be evolving according to basic Darwinian principles.
So what are these basic Darwinian principles again? And a word of caution -
they cannot be mistaken/confused with the more restrictive principles set forward by
21
Other terms used as synonyms for replication are retention or inheritance.
22
Darwinian principles have been applied to the development of computer viruses, the immune
systems or neural connections (Aunger, 2002; Plotkin, 1994; Edelman, 1987).
23 Universal Darwinism is a term that was coined by R. Dawkins (1983). It takes the definition even one
step further and postulates the assumption that core Darwinian rules of variation, selection and
replication would be followed by any life should it exist elsewhere in the universe. According to this
view as long as there is a population of replicating entities that makes imperfect copies of themselves,
and not all of these entities have the potential to survive, then Darwinian evolution will occur (see
Hodgson, 2005). Among others that recently suggested such a broad applicability of Darwinism are
R C. Lewontin (1970), D. C. Hull (1988b), Hull et al. (2001), H. C. Plotkin (1994) or, most famously,
D. Dennett (1995). The idea that natural selection could be a law-like process applicable to all life in
much broader sense than just the biological one, precedes Dawkins’ Universal Darwinism. As early as
fifty years after Darwin J. M. Baldwin developed a similar concept (see 1909) and even introduced the
concept of cultural inheritance (learning by imitation and instruction) for which he used the term social
heredity (see 1896).
24 Processes additional to those operating at the genetic level (see Hodgson, 2005). And it is because of
these additional processes specific to each scientific domains (allowing auxiliary explanations), that
authors like G. M. Hodgson argue that Universal Darwinism is neither a version of “biological
reductionism” – where everything can be explained by biological accounts, nor a version of
“biological imperialism” – where everything should be explained in biological terms (see 2005).
- 16 -
neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection (for those see
“Introduction”). Original Darwinian evolution was not limited to genes or DNA.
First because Darwin and his contemporaries knew nothing of such; second, there
were unresolved specifics within some (if not most) of the proposed mechanisms of
the evolutionary processes Darwin suggested. What Darwin gives us is actually
a general evolutionary matrix and promoters of Generalized Darwinism maintain
that this matrix can be modulated and refined according to specific needs of the data
it is to be filled with.
For Generalized Darwinism, the general matrix only states four principles.
First of all, we need to identify an entity that is capable of replicating itself (unit of
selection, unit of transmission). Then mechanisms of variation, selection and
replication/inheritance/retention need to be specified but they are not limited to any
special kind.25 If you are not able to define those mechanisms that are specific to your
level of analysis then you cannot argue that Darwinian evolution applies to the
development of the system you are interested in (at least on that level). But if you are
able to argue that there is a mechanism of retention, no matter how different they
might be across various domains, it is sufficient to argue that in every case
Darwinian evolution takes place.
As one of the recent promoters of Generalized Darwinism, G. M. Hodgson,
puts it (2005: 901), core Darwinian principles constitute: “a rigorous theory, but it
explains little on its own.” It needs additional work to provide us with something
useful as is needed in biology as well. It is a framework that needs to be filled in with
details. It does not provide us with all necessary causal mechanisms and
explanations of particular emerging properties at any level, be that biological or
sociocultural, and it does not free us from the necessity to search for those detailed
25For them specific processes of retention can vary enormously in different domains. For example
Darwin himself believed that inheritance of acquired characteristics in a “Lamarckian” sense works in
the biological domain and that idea was not widely rejected in biology until the 1890s. Therefore, for
advocates of Generalized Darwinism, there is no reason why the “Lamarckian” mechanism could not
be very well functional in other domains.
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explanations in addition. On the other hand it allows us to complete the puzzle by
putting particular explanations into a common complementary framework (see
Hodgson, 2005).
It was exactly this kind of enhanced Darwinism that most classical cultural
evolutionists used when/if they incorporated Darwinism at all, and furthermore in
a very rudimentary shape of this form. For the most part they failed in working out
the four core principles specific for sociocultural phenomena they were interested in
explaining (and sometimes they did not even try). Generalized Darwinism could be,
from its definition, both a value-free scientific framework and philosophical, even
a value-based normative framework, depending on the taste of its proponents and
where they want to take it. In its early rudimentary forms used by classical cultural
evolutionists these two were hardly ever distinguishable. A good example of this
mixture and of a rather ideological usage of Generalized Darwinism that had also its
impact on classical cultural evolutionism was the aforementioned Social Darwinism.
Social Darwinism is a very fuzzy notion that has a long history of use and
abuse. As a term, it is a pretty new invention26 and there was never a coherent group
of authors defined by the term.27 Throughout this later time the demeaning label28
trumped all other meanings of the term and most people when asked would imagine
some kind of a right or left wing ideology justifying various forms of eugenics,
26 The term Social Darwinism was rarely used up to the 1940s and neither H. Spencer nor W. G.
Sumner (both prominent sociocultural evolutionists) were associated with it. The first citations appear
within the context of disapproving imperialist or racist ideologies and its current meaning was
gradually built up by mainly two authors, T. Parsons (1932; 1934; 1937) and R. Hofstadter (1944). This
meaning extends blame for abusive use of ideas from biology in social sciences, sexism, eugenics, and
later on fascism, to Nazism and in this way to both world wars.
27 The term is often used so loosely that it can encompass even authors preceding C. R. Darwin’s work.
28 As R. C. Bannister nicely puts it (1979: 3): “Social Darwinism, as almost everyone knows, is a Bad
Thing.” An even better illustration, quite literally, uses G. M. Hodgson, when he describes the position
of Social Darwinism prominent in much of Western social science in the second half of the twentieth
century by the symbolism of a 1934 massive fresco by Diego Rivera in Mexico City entitled “Man at
the Crossroads.” G. M. Hodgson writes (2004: 428): “To the colorful right of the picture are Diego’s
chosen symbols of liberation, including Karl Marx, Vladimir Illych Lenin, Leon Trotsky, several young
female athletes and the massed proletariat. To the darker left of the mural are sinister battalions of
marching gas-masked soldiers, the ancient statue of a fearsome god, and the seated figure of
a bearded Charles Darwin.”
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racism or sexism. This demeaning label comes from those teachings that have not
broken free from various fallacies, mainly from the naturalistic fallacy29 which makes
the claim that the course of nature (“that which is”) is an inherent model to follow or
a source of values (“that which ought to be”). To some extent the stigmatizing tag is
not at all wrong as those teachings form an integral part of social Darwinian
accounts. On the other hand, the remaining parts of those accounts are formed by
legitimate extensions of Darwinian principles to human social evolution, as defined
by Generalized Darwinism (no matter how ill informed, confused or plain wrong
they were).
Applying the main Darwinian principles to explain other than just the
biological phenomena kicked off very early. C. R. Darwin himself embarks in this
transmission only a few years after the publication of The Origin of Species, where he
abstains as much as he can from making any kind of judgements about humans. He
was later open to such extensions and applied it himself to an evolution of social
groups, language and moral principles (both Darwin, 1859 and Darwin, 1871). Many
early works of Generalized Darwinism grew up within heated academic debates,
sometimes with large audiences and great publicity (see Desmond, 1989 or Browne,
2002). At the centre of those were clashes with prominent clergymen30 or scientists
defending theories allowing space for more fundamental creationist views. C. Overy
(1997: 56) in this context states that one clergyman is reported to have called Darwin
“the most dangerous man in Europe.” It was however mainly Darwin’s
contemporaries with different expertise who were “dangerous” in this respect as it
was them who started actively using his principles to explain sociocultural
29 A famous critique of naturalistically oriented ethical theories was introduced by G. E. Moore (1968
[1903]: 10, 13-16, 40), also known as the open question argument.
30 Probably the most famous confrontation took place at the meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science in Oxford in June 1860. The zoologist, T. H. Huxley, who is remembered as
“Darwin’s bulldog,” faced the Bishop of Oxford, S. Wilberforce, known as “Soapy Sam,” who asked
T. H. Huxley “whether he was descended from an ape on his grandfather or grandmother’s side”
(Overy, 1997: 56). T. H. Huxley retaliated and was later on supported on podium by Sir J. Lubbock
and J. Hooker, who also spoke in support of C. R. Darwin.
- 19 -
phenomena. And many times they opened new possible generalizations of his
principles even to C. R. Darwin himself.
One example can be the manner in which C. R. Darwin congratulated E. B.
Tylor upon reading his Primitive Culture in 1871 (F. Darwin, 1887: 151): “It is
wonderful how you trace animism from the lower races up the religious belief of the
highest races. It will make me for the future look at religion – a belief in the soul, etc.
– from a new point of view.” However, it should be noted at this point that, as with
so many other classical cultural evolutionists, even with E. B. Tylor it is difficult to
say if the principles he made use of, were specifically of Darwin’s origin or if they
were Spencerian. This brings us to the second major source of inspiration for classical
cultural evolutionism, which was, in addition to Generalized Darwinism,
universalistic progressivist evolutionary theory.
Using evolutionary themes to explain sociocultural phenomena precedes
Darwin’s Origins (Hawkins, 1997). Often they happened to be universalistic theories
of evolution reaching all possible domains and sometimes culminating in the all-
encompassing principles such as the principle of increasing complexity. H. Spencer is
their best representative, not only because of the immense popularity his writings
basked in, but also because he surpassed any of his contemporaries in the broadness
of the application of evolutionary principles to sociocultural phenomena, and was
also first to extend, in theory and in practice, evolutionary theory to the study of
religion (for more details see chapter Manners and Fashion in Spencer, 1891 [1854]).
The scope and reach of Spencer’s synthesis on his contemporaries can be seen even in
the works of Darwin, when he writes in The Origin of Species (1859: 428): “In the
future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be
securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr Herbert Spencer, that of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.”
It is also worth mentioning that H. Spencer was one of the first authors, who,
in the evolutionary thinking of the 19th century, took seriously the Degenerative
Hypothesis, i.e., the idea that “savage” peoples degenerated from a more advanced
- 20 -
state. On top of it being a legitimate scientific hypothesis, this idea was often used
also for ideological purposes, mainly by Church thinkers. Even Darwin felt the need
to deal with the hypothesis; he wrote in second edition of The Descent of Man
(1901[1871]: 221): “The arguments recently advanced by the Duke of Argyll and
formerly by Archbishop Whately, in favour of the belief that man came into the
world as a civilised being, and that all savages have since undergone degradation,
seem to me weak in comparison with those advanced on the other side.”
To appreciate the universalistic progressivist evolutionary theories as an
independent source of inspiration for classical cultural evolutionism, it is important
to remember that H. Spencer cannot be seen as someone who took Darwin’s
principles designed to explain biological phenomena and transferred them to the
domain of socio-cultural phenomena, as the prevalent tradition too often suggests.
That is simply not the case and it is just another insufficiently destroyed myth
pervasive in science. Given that many of H. Spencer’s evolutionary ideas (1851; 1891
[1852]; 1855) predates Darwin’s Origin of Species, some authors in this regard even
suggest a more accurate term for Darwinism - Biological Spencerism (Turner, 1985).31
The reason why I call these universalistic theories progressivistic, is because
they have been using, since the Enlightenment, developed concepts of evolution as
the unidirectional progress32 which are inherently infested with values.
31 As P. Dickens points out (2000: 19): “Herbert Spencer coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’ some
ten years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.”
32 Not even in philosophy of history does the concept of progress originate with the Enlightenment.
However, it is there, during the 18th century, it had been systematically elaborated for the first time.
Its origins can be traced back to 15th century Renaissance and later to the Modern period of 16th and
17th century (R. Descartes, F. Bacon). Some authors, such as J. Baillie (1950), argue that its assumptions
are fundamentally Christian. This concept is presented in different forms by D. Hume and J. G.
Herder and we can trace these different forms in emerging theories of Comparative Religion. The
strongest form of its expressions comes from Comte’s positivism, and is traceable mainly in E.
Durkheim and L. Lévy-Bruhl (see Sharpe, 1986 [1975]: 19-25). Herder’s romantic form, especially as
developed under the influence of the idealism of J. G. Fichte, F. W. J. Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel, is
taken on by F. M. Müller in his concept of Comparative mythology. Hegel’s influence was apparent
later, yet in more pronounced fashion, in the Phenomenology of religion (see Sharpe, 1986 [1975]: 25).
The idea of progress (entailing normative judgement) is in many accounts deeply entangled also with
two other concepts, namely that of teleology (pre-existing underlying purposes) and that of direction
(towards, for example, increasing differentiation). Though they represent three distinct notions, they
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To sum up my argument – to say that Darwinism created our discipline is
quite inaccurate, yet it makes a lot of sense to see classical cultural evolutionism as
one of the true starting points of our discipline. 33 And a special form of Darwinism,
are usually overlapping in complex ways. Among the most famous thinkers, in whose work the idea
of evolution is, in one form or another, closely intertwined with these two concepts, are, for example,
H. Spencer, L. H. Morgan, A. Toynbee or K. Marx. When disentangling relationships between
evolution and progress in the progressivistic accounts, it is possible to go into many levels and
although it is an interesting topic which is very informative, especially in relation to the emerging
science of religion, it is not the subject of this work, and, therefore, I will just briefly refer to one of its
other dimensions. In addition to the possible determination of whether a given “scientific” theory is
loaded with values or not, it is also possible to make the distinction as to whether it carries positive or
negative valences in relation to religions. On one side, for example, is the form of overcoming
a religious developmental stage by a metaphysical stage and, subsequently, overcoming the
metaphysical stage by a positivistic stage, or in the ideal of achieving freedom from religion, as
opposed to just freedom of religion. On other side, as mentioned by D. Wiebe (2008: 341), for example,
C. P. Tiele, one of the founding figures of the Religious Studies, sees the evolution of religion essentially
as religious evolution, a “growth or maturation in religiosity which is envisioned as taking place both at
the level of the individual and society.”
33 The biggest competitor (unless you count the common enemy of both, i.e., various theological
accounts) was the Nature School of Mythology of F. M. Müller (sometimes referred to as Comparative
Mythology). Both schools shared an interest in identifying and explaining the origin of religion. With
a certain degree of simplification, generalization and typifying, each of them can be classified into one
for centuries cultivated philosophical traditions that can be traced through the history back to
Antiquity. The first one is Euhemerism, second, the allegorical interpretation of myths developed by
Stoics which let up to the concept of natural religion. Some of the first classical cultural evolutionists,
particularly H. Spencer and E. B. Tylor, see the origin of religion in the worship of ancestors, i.e.,
deceased individuals who were gradually deified either due to their importance or because the living
still were in contact with them in their visions and dreams and thus believed that they live on
elsewhere and that they can influence the lives of the living. They thus belong to the first tradition,
elaborated and renowned mainly by E. B. Tylor in his concept of animism - “the ghost theory of the
origin of religion.” The Nature School of Mythology, led by F. M. Müller, claims, on the contrary, that
religion arises from the experience of the infinite, which we perceive beyond everyday manifestations
of the finite visible phenomenal world, when our mind connected it to the moral appeal. Unknown
forces of nature are in a certain stage of development captured in language with the help of
personification and from the sun, moon, stars, lightning and storms, gods and are formed in
mythologies. Both schools also competed in the shared interest of progress. F. M. Müller was its key
supporter but it was a progress, as we have seen, differently oriented (under the influence of romantic
idealism) and he remained sceptical of Darwinian evolutionism. His interest was primarily
philological and most of his publications were focused on Comparative linguistics and subsequently
Comparative mythology (see 1869; 1875; 1889; 1891; 1892; 1893; 1899). For the philological school,
mythology was phases of “disease of language,” “a period of temporary insanity in human mind,”
while the anthropological school understood it as anachronisms (“survivals” from earlier ages of
mankind; a form of “fossilised thought”). The solution offered by classical cultural evolutionists seems
to be more elegant and straightforward in a sense that it does not need to postulate a special phase
suddenly arising in the evolution of language use, some kind of language abuse that followed after
previous stages of its use where myth was not present and which later again passed. Contrarily, in
their suggestion, it is a natural consequence of the gradual upward development of thought where
there is in each successive stage something traceable from the previous stage. In this case, something
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that is, Generalized Darwinism (especially in the form of its attempts to be applied to
explaining religious phenomena), together with universalistic progressivistic
theories, formed essential and inseparable parts of this movement. This connection
was typical for most of classical cultural evolutionary conceptions of authors relevant
to the origins of the Study of Religions (i.e., particularly the first generation of
Darwinian anthropologists).
To uncover what actually was the more basic and important inspiration for the
early science of religion (Comparative Religion), whether the ideological impact of
Darwin’s work or Spencer’s synthesis, is very difficult, if not impossible due to the
subsequent feedbacks34 and it is not a primary goal of this work. Crucial to my
argument is that it was only the combination of both of these influences that
managed to contribute to the creation of major classical cultural evolutionary
theories we see as belonging under Religious Studies, as the ones of Sir J. Lubbock,35
E. B. Tylor, A. Lang,36 W. R. Smith37 or R. R. Marett.38
we brought with us from earlier animalistic, cruel, irrational, bestial phase. Perhaps the hardest blow
in the polemics between the two schools, according to E. J. Sharpe (1986 [1975]: 60), was inflicted in
1884 when the Anthropological school was given priority in the draught of the entry of “Mythology”
in the ninth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
34 My argument is in accord with views of both W. Capps (1995: 71-87) and J. Cartwright (2000: 320-
325) who try to show that Darwin’s influence on early anthropological theorizing appears to be more
ideological than actual and that it was H. Spencer who seems to have had a more concrete impact on
the thoughts of Marett and his colleagues (see Marett, 1971 [1920]: 104-105).
35 Sir J. Lubbock (1865; 1870), in his concept of the religious evolution of mankind, connects Comte’s
philosophy of history and Darwinian principles. He may serve as a prime example of unilinear
evolution, as he asserts that, regardless of the diversity of origins and the diversity of environments, if
the races are at the same stage of mental development, they will have highly similar concepts. As
C. Overy, who was Darwin’s neighbour in his childhood, points out (1997: 56), he “lived three miles
from Down House as a boy and was greatly influenced by Darwin” and is regarded as first Social
Darwinist ever (see Trigger, 1998), who developed one of the first theories of race based on Darwin’s
ideas.
36 In the works of E. B. Tylor (1861; 1865; 1871) and A. Lang (1884; 1887; 1898) it is similarly to those of
R. R. Marett (1971 [1920]), much easier to trace the influence of A. Comte and H. Spencer than that of
C. R. Darwin (see Capps, 1995 and Cartwright, 2000).
37 W. R. Smith (1885; 1889) was one of the first classical cultural evolutionists, who laid emphasis on
the primacy of ritual and the social. Because of this fact he is sometimes referred to as the father of
social anthropology, for example by M. Douglas (see 1970: 20). Douglas appreciated his interest in the
present, in a sense that he was interested in what is common/shared in the experience of modern and
primitive man, rather than in anachronisms and what they can tell us about the past, which was in her
view the prevailing interest of most of his contemporaries (especially E. B. Tylor’s).
- 23 -
Generalized Darwinism had an important ability to be incorporated in the
highest kind of synthesis, into a broader unifying perspective which goes beyond the
objectives of specific sciences, offering a comprehensive philosophical picture,
a determining place for all kinds of human knowledge, and which possessed all-
encompassing cosmic principle of evolution, as did the views of A. Comte or
H. Spencer, whose systems have enjoyed enormous respect and popularity at this
time. Its main principles were open to generalizations that resonated with values of
38 The figure of R. R. Marett, whose main works appeared later, compared to the first generation of
Darwinian anthropologists, is interesting also for two other reasons. To begin with, he illustrates how
dynamic was the movement of classical cultural evolutionists, how rapid shifts and changes it
witnessed. Secondly, he illustrates how close some classical cultural evolutionists’ ideas are, on closer
inspection, to the ideas of contemporary CSR (for its general principles on which there is the widest
consensus see Sørensen, 2005). In the first aspect, he, for example, criticized E. B. Tylor and also J. G.
Frazer for not putting enough stress on the emotional component of personhood which, according to
him, should be accentuated primarily, while so far a favoured intellectual component is, he asserts,
only secondary. Furthermore, in the fight against intellectualism he pushed for the main emphasis of
the study being transferred from what is being thought, to what is being done (1941: 157): “I preferred,
in dealing with very primitive folk, to lay less stress on what they thought, or were supposed to think,
than on what they did.” This resulted in the scope of classical cultural evolutionism, quite contrary to
how it is usually being portrayed, to a development moving from intellectualism towards an interest
in behaviour/action which is well traceable; in the words of J. E. Harrison (1909: 495): “Creeds,
Doctrines, theology and the like are only a part, and at first the least important part, of religion.” In
other words, ritual gradually ceases to be seen as a secondary phenomenon, which was earlier
understood and appreciated at best as a way of expressing stabilized beliefs, but now becomes central.
As J. E. Harrison adds (1909: 503): “Man, we imagine, believes in a god or gods and then worships.
The real order seems to be that, in a sense presently to be explained, he worships, he feels and acts,
and out of his feeling and action, projected into his confused thinking, he develops a god.” To
illustrate my second point: R. R. Marett does not search for genetic origins of religion he was very well
aware that neither a single primordium nor an evolutionary stage for the origin of religion could be
laid down (see Sjöblom, 2007: 295). He also brings a particular emphasis on the mind and on states of
mind. For him, religious beliefs and behaviours are of complex nature and what evolutionary
investigations of religion should be composed of, is laying out the psychological conditions for them
to come into being (see Marett, 1909: viii-xi). He understands religion as a “composite or concrete state
of mind” (i.e., he has an explicit psychological assumption that the religion stems from the states of
mind). He decomposes composite concepts of animism - spirit, soul - into simpler building blocks
which they are built from, and which make their existence possible. T. Sjöblom (2007: 295) draws
attention to the point when he writes: “Marett actually defined the whole field of Comparative
Religion as a branch of psychology and argued that it was the human mind that should be the
foremost object of study for all scholars working in the field (Marett, 1909: 143-169; 1920: 1-26).” That
the early evolutionists failed to do so (see Preus, 1987: 208-209), due to the lack of proper methods and
data since experimental psychology or cross-cultural psychology were still in their beginnings or non-
existent, is another matter. For good introductions to how this situation has changed, making
examinations of human behaviour scientifically meaningful from evolutionary perspectives see
Cartwright (2001) or Laland & Brown (2002).
- 24 -
the industrialists and commercialists of Victorian Britain. All 1250 copies of the first
edition of The Origin were sold out on the first day of its publication (see Dickens,
2000). The very same fact is highlighted similarly by E. J. Sharpe in his summing
evaluation (1986 [1975]: 25): “In effect, scientific theory had joined hands in the
theory of evolution with a dominant philosophy of history. Neither, on its own,
could have made the impact […]; together they conquered the nineteenth century
[…].”
- 25 -
Critique of Classical Cultural Evolutionism
Theories of classical cultural evolutionism have their faults. However, it is necessary
to distinguish between objections that become valid only when we agree to some sort
of “ideological turn” and objections that have, so to speak, absolute validity, because
they affect either scientific means in general or tap into already disproved theoretical
assumptions of given theories.
Among criticisms of the first type, we can place, for example, the objection to
originalism. What is this objection about? It attacks the conviction that religion
remains in its basics (i.e., in its essentials, in what we should be truly interested in) as
“primitive” - that how religion is today is how it was in its origins 39 Said differently,
that the origins are the most interesting, the most informative and the most
important point even in explanations of the current functions of religions. Such an
objection is, of course, justified against the clean-cut form of this approach, where
someone would want to argue that such “basics/origins/origin” of religion is the only
thing that is possible or even meaningful to study in religion or that it is something
exhaustively covering all current functions of this phenomenon. However, by itself,
the objection does not offer an argument against the fact that these “basics” are there
in the present forms of religions and that they still are functional and it is not valid
against the moderate form of this position which claims that “basics” remain to be
very informative yet little known/explored.
In the following section I will try to formulate as concisely as possible five
errors I consider absolutely valid. It should be borne in mind, given the scope and
objectives of this chapter that we may understand these deficiencies in some sense as
typical or characteristic of classical cultural evolutionism as a whole, yet it is
39 L. Wieseltier (2006) in his The New York Times review The God Genome in this relation calls
Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006) one big exercise in “unexamined
originalism.”
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necessary to point out that it is, however, a generalization of objections which may in
fact relate to only some authors, or even to only some works of these authors.
The first of the objections is about linking any evolutionary process with progress,40
in which the explanatory claims and normative statements (propositions that are
value based and essentially culturally imbedded) are merged together. What should
have been a value-neutral description of the developmental stages of the
evolutionary process was changed into an evaluative tool - into a means serving
other goals than the mere pursuit of knowledge. These additional goals can be
prompted by various motivations, most frequently by the effort to improve the
quality of the examined phenomenon (e.g., social life or a particular religious
practice). But to bring in extra agendas is to threaten one of the cornerstones of any
scientific endeavour.41
40 Earlier I have already mentioned the two most powerful sources of inspiration for the concept of
progress, one coming from the German and the other from the French philosophy of history. For
classical theories of evolution in the study of religions it was the French branch that had the bigger
influence, particularly the work of such authors as M. J. A. Condorcet, H. de Saint-Simon, and
especially A. Comte.
41 Contemporary authors who still uphold the possibility of this connection, and there is only few of
them, deal with this criticism by trying to define their evaluative criteria as precisely as possible and
by devoting much space and great attention to argue why are they see those criteria “value-free” and
claim they are universal. S. K. Sanderson, whom we can use as an example, uses, in his theory
“Evolutionary Materialism: A General Theory of Social Evolution,” criteria such as (2007: 307-325):
“the desire to consume high levels of calories, nutrients, and animal proteins; the desire for good
physical and mental health and well-being; the desire for material possessions that are labour saving
and that make life more gratifying, interesting, and enjoyable; the desire for individual autonomy and
thus for minimizing the social constraints placed on an individual’s behaviour; or the desire for
nonmaterial modes of abstract expression as represented by cosmic understanding, art, literary forms,
and music.” S. K. Sanderson is also interested in the evolution of religion per se (outside mainstream
CSR circles). Under one term “evolution of religion,” he conflates both biological/genetic and cultural
(in his terms: social) evolutionary perspectives. That allowed him to use by-productivist Kirkpatrick’s
Attachment Theory of Religion (see chapter “Evolutionary study of culture without cultural
evolution”) and turn it into a more general adaptationist account, in which religion is seen as an
adaptation (for standard text book definition of adaptation see Rose & Lauder, 1996) for “dealing with
existential anxiety and ontological insecurity” (Kirkpatrick, 2008: 72). Based on this notion and
concept of cult institutions, he creates a macro-historical account of four major stages of religious
evolution: shamanic (individualistic practices), communal (collective and calendric rites), Olympian or
polytheistic, and monotheistic (specialized priesthoods). As the two best predictors for religious
evolution, he suggests the mode of subsistence technology and the presence or absence of writing.
Subsequently, he uses the Attachment Theory to explain the transition from the third to fourth major
stage. Monotheism emerges as a reaction to a massive increase in the scale of war and urbanization in
the social ecology from 600 BCE to first century CE, which increased social and psychological
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The second mistake theories of evolution can commit is related to the equally
problematic connection of the evolutionary processes with the concept of teleology
(developmentalism/immanent change/directionality/internal potency).42 Basically it is a dual
error. Firstly, it is a procedural error of a self-confirming theory which seeks to prove
its own assumption through that assumption. In this case, it assumes that it is typical
for an evolutionary process to have its own internal direction that is its inherent
latent quality which gradually unfolds/develops and leads the process to a particular
end state. This endogenous quality is over time being raised to a law-like process and
the evolutionary change thus becomes its own explanation. Secondly, it is an error of
reversing causal effects. Not only does it attempt to explain (explanans) what is being
explained (explanandum) by the explained (explanandum), but in this explanation it
also works not with external pressures, which would under certain circumstances in
particular time and space cause something, but rather with an inherent natural
function coming/emanating from within the investigated object that brings the
change/evolution by how it is inclined to fulfil its existing potential.43
disruption, resulting in the rising of new types of “monotheistic religions of human compassion”
(Sanderson, 2008: 71).
42 K. R. Popper (1957) draws attention to this aspect of evolutionism of the 19th century, though he
does so in a broader context and with a slightly shifted meaning, defining it as one of the essential
characteristics of his concept of historicism. The same problem is also analysed by L. Goldstein (1967),
who already in this context contrasts developmental and causal laws, and R. Nisbet (1969), who mainly
deals with the conceptualization of the idea of immanent change of classical and contemporary
evolutionists. That criticism is widened by M. Mandelbaum (1971), who uses the term directional laws
to identify the problem and A. Giddens (1981; 1984), who pays more attention to the dimension of
development of internal potency. On this occasion, it is worth mentioning the etymology of the word
evolution. Originating from the Latin, the term evolutio, was originally used to refer to the unfolding
a scroll or the “unrolling of parchments” (Service, 1971).
43 Developmentalism in the evolutionary thinking of his contemporaries saw as problematic even
Darwin himself and for a long time he refused to use the term evolution because of it. As S. Toulmin
points out (1972: 330-331): “he did not use this word [evolution] at all until the sixth edition of Origin,
and then did so only sparingly.” In this sense, there is a huge discrepancy between what we might call
traditional evolutionary theory and the theory of natural selection. To appreciate its contribution it is
important to realize that the theory of natural selection arises inter alia as a critical response to the
traditional evolutionary theory. For some authors, it is precisely this critical response, wherein lies the
genius of the whole theory. The problem addressed in Darwin’s time, was not to show (prove) that
there is a design in nature. The problem was how to explain that nature is so full of design, which was
a generally shared assumption. When and how does it get there and what carries it. As S. Pinker puts
it (2012), it was “one of the great mysteries of science.” The theory of natural selection took it as
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The third major shortcoming which classical cultural evolution accounts (or
any uninformed evolutionary treatises for that matter) were not able to avoid, refers
to the overuse of unverifiable statements. By which I mean hypothetical stories from the
prehistory of the human race, where there is no way how to confirm or refute them.
Speculative stories which are not based, in any strict sense, on empirical research.44 I
do not see them as problematic when they are intentionally used only as a kind of
thought experiment that seeks to provide readers with a certain mode of
“evolutionary” thinking, followed by the actual scientific data processing. Real error
occurs when authors think that the scientific work in the area of application of
evolutionary theory begins and ends with these hypothetical stories.45 Thanks to the
a question of the utmost importance. What it actually differed in from the standard answers at that
time was that it revealed the design in the natural world as illusory. Thus it was a solution to the
problem with a twist in the end that few expected: the natural world seems to be so full of design
because of an illusion which gets created as a “by-product” by natural selection. This effect is
produced by the accumulation of error during replication over many generations. Originally
a random error, which had as one of its random consequences a successful replication is now so
widespread in the population that it looks as if the given population was from the very beginning
equipped with the ability to successfully replicate.
44 Speculations about the first/primal form of religion, popular among classical cultural evolutionists
(and not just them), can serve as a famous example. It was successively found in manism (H. Spencer),
animism (E. B. Tylor), animatism (R. R. Marett), magic (J. G. Frazer), supreme being (A. Lang),
urmonoteism (W. Schmidt), or totemism (E. Durkheim and S. Freud), without the possibility to make
any final call which would determine which one is it. In addition to anthropologists using cultural
evolution, I have to also mention, due to relatedness of the subject, the classical representatives of the
psychology and sociology of religion. Sociology of religion and psychology of religion are both
specific in their own right which makes them different from anthropology of religion. However, it
would be wrong to imagine them growing up in a vacuum outside of the most discussed topics of the
era. The first works of psychology of religion started to appear in the United States already in the
nineties of the 19th century, inspired by the German experimental psychology of W. M. Wundt.
Among the most significant representatives were J. H. Leuba, E. D. Starbuck and W. James. Its
trademark was Protestantism (open interest in other traditions, and therefore greater connection to
Comparative Religion appeared only in the twenties of the 20th century with J. B. Pratt), extreme
individualism and thanks to the dominant anchoring in the philosophy of pragmatism it also treated
evolutionary theory differently. Autonomous sociology of religion begins to emerge in many ways as
a critical response to the psychological as well as individualistic tendencies of the anthropological
school with the work of E. Durkheim.
45 Some authors, who are uncritically hostile towards any evolutionary approaches, inflate this kind of
objection to gargantuan proportions, sometimes claiming that all evolutionary explanations are
unfalsifiable. While I agree that in some cases this can happen, especially if they are naively,
ideologically or non-professionally constructed, I want to, at the same time, distance myself from
those who do abuse the objection in this way. For an extended argument on how current evolutionary
modelling avoids unfalsifiable usage see Ketelaar & Ellis (2000).
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evolutionary biologists S. J. Gould and R. Lewontin, this kind of stories is known as
“just-so stories”46 due to their criticism of the “excessive” adaptationist program.
Such a program is, according to Gould and Lewontin, characterized by the
vulgarization of the otherwise useful term ‘adaptation,’ into an obsession to see
adaptation in everything and behind everything. In an effort to prove it in everything
and behind everything the term ends up being nothing more than simply a piling up
of these stories over one another (see 1979). Overall, this objection is not a criticism of
an evolutionary approach per se, it is rather a critique of poorly done science in
general.47
The fourth major problem I see is in any attempt to link the evolutionary process
with the concept of rigid unilinearity. This is the idea that evolution should be uniform
and unidirectional - sort of a fixed pattern of development, where there is no room
left for regression, stagnation or skipping the developmental stages. It is a view in
which all cultures have to go through all the “prescribed” stages inexorably.48
Fifth and the last of the big problems with classical sociocultural evolutionary
theories, is any effort to link the socio-cultural evolutionary processes with the development
46 The term is a deliberate reminiscence of the famous children’s book of the same name by J. R.
Kipling (1902), Nobel Prize winner for literature, in which the author describes the origin of different
things. For instance, the elephant’s trunk originated when Elephant’s Child, who was full of satiable
curiosity, came one day to a river to ask a crocodile what he has for dinner. The crocodile, instead of
an answer, responds by demonstration and gnaws the originally small nose of Elephant’s child. In the
subsequent fight, the elephant’s nose is pulled to its current size.
47 A similar type of shortcoming is also often characteristic for scientistic philosophical treatises that
try to shield themselves by science although we would be searching for science there in vain. Even
though, here it is not strictly speaking misconduct in scientific work as by definition it is not scientific
but philosophical. Nevertheless, these essays try to profile themselves as such. In particular, I have in
mind political agitations mostly of atheistic character in the style of D. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell:
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006), which cast bad light on the Cognitive Science of Religion as
they are using its impartial conclusions selectively and for their own purposes to build tendentious
arguments far beyond science. For a more comprehensive critique of Dennett’s efforts misusing
Cognitive Science of Religion, from the point of view of a cognitive scientist of religion, see Geertz
(2008).
48 However, in case of this objection, it needs to be noted, that it is rather a hypothetical possibility as
trying to find a supporter of such a “strong” unilinearity even among the “hardcore” classics as
H. Spencer and L. H. Morgan would prove close to impossible. Although this is a separate issue, the
power of unilinearity is closely related to the power of previously mentioned teleological anchoring of
a given theory. The stronger the internal tendency for a given result common to all cultures, the
stronger will have to be the extra causes moving the development away from it.
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of individual personality. In other words, an effort to show that there is a homology
between these two processes which can take various forms. This idea was originally
inspired by the biological theory called “recapitulation theory,” and in a nutshell it
says that the development of individuals during their lifetime (ontogeny) reflects the
evolutionary history of its species (phylogeny). Nowadays already disproven, this
theory was in the evolutionary thinking of the 19th century widely accepted.
Transfer to the socio-cultural evolution did not take long and it can be found perhaps
most strongly advocated, in the concepts of L. Lévy-Bruhl (1926 [1910]), who brings
together specific forms of thought with a specific level of technology and social
organization in which a given person finds itself located in.
In this chapter, I gave a basic assessment of the benefits as well as the
criticisms of classical cultural evolutionism. During this, I have defined two
important concepts, that is Generalized Darwinism and Universal
Darwinism/Darwinian monism, the definition of which is essential for grasping the
difference between them and Darwinism, between them and neo-Darwinism, and
last but not least between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.
In the very conclusion I explicitly outlined the objections against cultural
evolutionism, which I consider crucial, unsurpassed and in a way forever current.
Avoiding the mistakes these lead to is what I see as the minimal qualifying
prerequisite for any account to make it on my list of assessed theories of
contemporary cultural evolutionism.49 I continue with the critical analysis of three
49Contemporary theories of cultural evolution rarely use classics to legitimize their stances, and if they
do, it usually couples them with two elements. First, is the selection of names authors use as examples
of founding figures of the field (in our case, it is usually anthropology), which often reflects how large
a role authors are willing to attribute to cultural evolutionary thinking in general. It is especially the
case if they mention only one or two names. Besides E. B. Tylor, it is only L. H. Morgan that gets
typically mention (see Richerson & Boyd, 2005: 58). Second, they see as necessary in a single breath to
distinguish their “new evolutionism” from the “progressivistic evolutionism” and to oppose to it
whether in its classical form or in one of its further developed modern forms (in the twentieth century
for example by authors such as L. White, M. Sahlins, J. Steward, M. Harris, R. Carneiro, A. Johnson,
T. Earle and others). Yet the only progressivistic principle that can be saved is also the least
informative one which has nothing to do with evolution as defined by the neo-Darwinian theory of
- 31 -
cultural evolution theories that meet this prerequisite, and at the same time are most
widely used in the current CSR, in the following chapter.
natural selection. What I mean is the principle of increasing complexity/differentiation distilled from
the work of H. Spencer after removal of other progressivistic parts.
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CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL
EVOLUTIONISM
In the current CSR, we can find several kinds of extensively used and developed
theories of Darwinian evolution transferred to the domain of sociocultural
phenomena.50 When we take a closer look, we soon learn that the concept of
evolution is sometimes used vaguely and sometimes even on different semantic
levels which need to be carefully distinguished. One of the main distinguishing traits
we may choose is whether a given theory of evolution applies a genuine process of
cultural evolution (evolution of culture) or not. Among the three most important
theories that do use evolution of culture, I include various group selection accounts,
Dual Inheritance Theory and memetics. As the first theories I will critically assess,
I choose those that work with the concept of group selection, namely because the
concept has in comparison with other analysed theories, the longest but also the most
controversial modern scientific history.
50For a concise introduction to the recent discussion which treats the concept of cultural evolution as
a general model for the interdisciplinary science of culture, see A. Mesoudi (2011) and M. Blute (2010).
Both authors pursue the ideal of an evolutionary synthesis of the social sciences and pay special
attention to the cultural microevolution vs. macroevolution dichotomy.
- 33 -
i) Group Selection Accounts
Group selection accounts can be traced back to Darwin,51 who started to utilise the
concept in his later books. Let us pause now for a moment to examine the traditional
conception he presented in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, as his
main argument remains for the theory of group selection basically unchanged to this
day (1871: 166):
“It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or
no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same
tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the
standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.
There can be no doubt that a tribe including many members who, from possessing in
a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were
always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good would
be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”
C. R. Darwin presents in this passage on a small space the basic idea of the whole
concept, which in its principle is very simple: natural selection operates not only at
the individual level but also at the group level. The only thing needed to express
such a hypothetical possibility, is actually the idea that there is a greater number of
groups, who compete among themselves as rival units, and with this idea to expand
the existing range of effects of selective pressures. Whereas the attention was
previously focused on the individual as an adaptive unit, receiving and bearing the
advantages and disadvantages of competing with other individuals within a group,
now a group becomes the adaptive unit competing with other groups for resources
within the same ecosystem containing a given population of groups (to use the
51Darwin can be argued to be the first proponent of such theories, provided we do not want to go
even deeper into the various functionalist concepts, metaphors and analogies which would be easily
found in works of philosophers of society of different periods and different focus. However, at that
point we would have to assign some space also to many forms of non-evolutionary functionalist
thinking, which of course would divert us from this thesis’ objectives. Functional thinking, though at
times highly effective when applied on things that have a purpose, can in other contexts lead us very
quickly astray. The simplest example can be offered in teleological ways of thinking in children who
see inanimate natural objects as deliberately created artefacts. In this view, the sun is in the sky for
specific reasons, such as providing light for people to see on the road or the heat so the animals were
not cold.
- 34 -
language of evolutionary biology). The hereby adjusted model then incorporates the
fact that natural selection can produce individuals who will contribute to the good of
the group even when it harms themselves or their relatives. However, it is much
more complicated to actually show that natural selection really does take place on
such a level, because for that you need more than just a thought experiment. For this
kind of demonstration we really need empirical data that would show how exactly in
this process do phenotypic variation, heritability, and fitness consequences look like.
In evolutionary biology, these issues were a vividly discussed topic in the
sixties and in the end, group selection was heavily outweighed and rejected.52 The
winner was the main alternative hypothesis, concentrating on the individual (or even
individual genes) which basically states that the type of selective pressure on
individuals within the group is always stronger, and that group selection is in
comparison with it, invariably so weak a force that it can in most cases be ignored.53
A group is not an independent organism, it is just a name for what individual
organisms (individuals) do to one another when fighting for survival when they find
out they can use other organisms to their advantage, or even increase the fitness of
their own genes in the bodies of other individuals.
Rejection of group selection prevailed in evolutionary biology (and in other
disciplines) until today, even though, as S. Pinker notes (2012): “[…] the group
selectionists tend to declare victory, and write as if their theory has already
superseded a narrow, reductionist dogma that selection acts only at the level of
genes.” However, the status of group selection, with the introduction of more precise
procedures and especially with narrowing down the angle of its impact,54 gradually
improved, which is mainly related to the increasing popularity of multilevel selection
52 Classical references used to document this step are G. C. Williams (1966) and R. Dawkins (1976).
53 Most biologists agree that selection at the level of the group can sometimes occur (when migration
rates are implausibly low and group extinction rates are implausibly high) but is only a weak force in
nature. Mainly because individuals can move between groups and compared to individuals, groups
have slow lifecycles which results in individual adaptations almost always predominating over
adaptations for the group (see Ridley, 1996).
54 In the words of D. S. Wilson (2002: 6): “A middle ground is becoming established in which groups
are acknowledged to evolve into adaptive units, but only if special conditions are met.”
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theory in other fields of study. In starting to take the theory of group selection
seriously again, it is valuable to keep in mind the criticisms raised against it in the
sixties. This is especially so for scholars of religion who, for obvious reasons, often
lack a strong background in the history of evolutionary biology due to which they
run a significant risk of neglecting objections that have already been raised, as well as
of siding with only one party in an uncritical (uninformed) unilateral fashion.
Group selection accounts entered the Study of Religions, through the current
CSR, mainly through the work of D. S. Wilson,55 who for a long time has been one of
its most prominent advocates. They also appeared through dual inheritance
accounts, yet in a narrower form of cultural group selection (for details and
proponents see the next chapter). For a better comparison of D. S. Wilson’s view to
other evolutionary concepts dealing with religion, it is worth to explicitly mention
some of its major characteristics. In contrast to Dawkins’ concept that underlies the
theory of memes (Dawkins, 1976; Blackmore, 1999), Wilson does not claim that
human nature would be fundamentally selfish.56 He certainly does not share
Dawkins’ hostile attitude towards religion, which so often manifests itself in the
rhetoric of the parasitic or virus-like nature of religious beliefs. Unlike Dawkins,
Wilson does not decompose culture on gene-like units that do not always serve the
best interests of their bearers. Contrary to the position of the EWCE approach,
55 D. S. Wilson is the program director of Evolutionary Studies at Binghamton University (EVOS) as

well as of Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS), an initiative that seeks to create ERS as a new field of
scientific inquiry (for the project’s website see: http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/). His book
Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002) was chosen by the Times Literary
Supplement as the Book of the Year in 2002. In 2010 he was also invited to deliver a keynote lecture on
the XXth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR),
Religion: A Human Phenomenon, titled “Religion as a Product of Evolution” (for the lecture see:
http://mediacast.ic.utoronto.ca/20100816-IAHR-1/index.htm; for proceedings of the congress see:
http://individual.utoronto.ca/yeungsydney/IAHR-2010-Congress-Proceedings-WEB.pdf). Also worth
mentioning, is the Binghamton Religion and Spirituality Project (BRSP), focusing on the diversity and
everyday practise of religion and spirituality in the Binghamton area. Supported by a John Templeton
Foundation grant, it is a collaboration between D. S. Wilson and H. Whitehouse, where we can see
a strong connection of D. S. Wilson to one of the biggest names in the Cognitive Science of Religion in
general (for the project’s website see: http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/research/brsp/).
56 What this point means is elaborated on in great detail in the following parts of this thesis devoted to
analyses of the nature of human altruistic traits.
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Wilson does not confine himself to work only with genetic evolution. According to
him the EWCE approach is not flawed, just too limiting for his taste, as it covers only
a part of the story. Wilson claims that due to the cultural component, human
evolution is a rapid and continuous process. Genetic evolution, working with the
“ready-made” Stone Age human nature, is in comparison very slow. He uses the
term cultural evolution only scarcely, as if he fears the negative connotations it
carries in the social sciences. However, he argues that he addresses human evolution
and that he is not limited to genetic evolution only. Yet, where it is not possible to
avoid it any longer, he identifies the process for what it is, i.e., cultural evolution (see
2002: 11).
In CSR we find the concept of group selection in different modifications most
frequently in the works of group-level adaptationists. What does this theory applied
to the explanation of religion claim? Given that group selection refers to several
different conceptions, when answering this question, first we have to make clear
which of these conceptions we have in mind. Only then we can look at how this
conception applies to religion. It is possible to come across such a usage where the
term denotes any competition taking place on a group level. Sometimes the term is
used very loosely in the sense of the evolution of organisms living in groups.
Sometimes the term is used more as a very precise expression for the change in gene
frequency of subsets of genetically related and reciprocally cooperating individuals
that does not deviate in any way from the standard gene-level theory of natural
selection (see West, Griffin, & Gardner, 2007). However, I focus my attention solely
on the conception that starts with the standard gene-level theory of natural selection
and, as an add-on, extends its scope beyond the limits of individual organisms to
groups.
Claims which define such a form of group selection applied to religion might
be as follows: (A) Religious groups qualify as organisms. Like any other organism,
even they are products of natural selection. Religious groups go through the process
of adaptation to their environment, which takes place in the background of countless

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generations. Through variation and selection they gradually acquire characteristics
which help them survive and reproduce. Religious groups, in this view, become
autonomous adaptive units which maximize their fitness as individual organisms do,
thanks to among-group selective pressures (i.e., due to this pressure, increase the
number of copies in the next generation as genes do). (B) Among-group selective
pressure can be, in specific cases, strong enough to overcome within-group selective
pressure.57 (C) Current religious groups resemble previous religious groups, and it is
therefore justified to speak in this sense, of the mode of reproduction in which, with
certain modifications the characteristics are passed to descendant groups. (D) The
cultural evolution of religious groups itself is much faster than genetic evolution.
Opposing adaptationist hypothesis argues that some elements of religion are
products of within-group selection favouring certain individuals of the group at the
expense of other group members. Group selection is inseparably linked to a search
for alternatives to this position. It was also historically connected with the
development of concepts of “self-sacrificing” altruism58 which would in fact be an
adaptation to group-against-group competition. Even the opposing hypothesis
where natural selection operates at the level of individuals to such an extent it might
threaten cohesion of groups, it has to solve the problem which obviously altruistic
traits of social behaviour cause to classical Darwinian theory. However, in its
57 In most cases in mathematical models, this occurs at a time when the within group selection does
not produce any effect (“stable equilibrium”) and everything that happens can be attributed to the
relative contribution of among group selective pressures. This element has become an integral part of
the theory of group selection since it became developed in more detail at the level of formal
mathematical models that have tried to overcome previous criticism (see Price, 1972). However, the
main objection of critics from the sixties was not that among-group selection did not exist, but rather
that individual within-group selection is always a stronger pressure. Because of this a priori defensive
attitude, the new group selectionists rarely concentrate on cases that would be expected to occur most
frequently, as such cases would be the most appropriate to develop group adaptations, i.e., cases
where the individual and group selection operated in parallel in the same direction. Yet such cases do
not help them to prove the validity of their claim that we need specific group selection theory. On the
contrary, and against all expectations, we often meet with the effort, so far always doomed to
marginal results (as indicated by the aforementioned mathematical models), to show where the group
selection pressures prevailed over individual selection pressures in the moments when both kinds
counteracted each other.
58 For which I later suggest the term selfless altruism as opposed to selfish altruism.
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solution of the “problem of altruism,” evolutionary pressure to create the
psychological trait of “self-sacrificing” altruism finds no place.
The two most famous individual gene selection solutions emerged from
evolutionary biology in the sixties and seventies. The first one, called “kin selection”
was developed by W. D. Hamilton. In a nutshell it says that the altruistic behaviour
will be selected for by evolution when it will be directed towards relatives according
to the degree of their relatedness. Thus even the individual who behaves
altruistically, profits, as the behaviour increases the chance of survival and
reproduction of shared genes. The second solution, called “reciprocal altruism,”
created by R. L. Trivers is somewhat broader in its scope. Altruism may be selected
for even when it is in fact just a benefits delay, benefits of which the individual will
become a recipient in the future. In this case, people provide at first glance an
altruistic service, yet expect it will be repaid (quid pro quo or also you-scratch-my-
back-and-later-I’ll-scratch-yours model).
Even Darwin himself was well aware of the fundamental problem with which
the social life of certain species confronts his theory59 and the previously mentioned
expansion of effects of selective pressure on groups was part of his proposed solution
addressing mainly the evolution of human moral virtues. So, where does this
fundamental problem of social life lie? Darwin’s theory is based on the maximization
of survival and reproduction of individuals. Groups on the other hand function best
while maximizing the mutual enrichment of one member by the other. But what of
the behaviour that on one side enriches the individual and at the same time hurts the
group? The interest of an individual and interest of a group more often than not
come into conflict with each other (e.g., the comfort of a single driver in one car
compared to the use of public transport) and Darwin’s theory in its simplest
unexpended form predicts that the maximisation of the individual interests will
59I adopt the identification of this problem as fundamental from D. S. Wilson (2002: 7-8), who referred
to it as the “fundamental problem of social life.” In the literature it is also referred to as “collective
action problems/dilemmas” or “tragedies of the commons.” In behavioural economics literature, we
would find the same problem addressed mainly in applied Game Theory in Public Goods Games.
- 39 -
prevail. This preference should in the long run lead to the dominance of selfish
individualistic instincts in the population to such an extent that it would effectively
disrupt any social tendencies. This is especially so when the best possible strategy
any group member can make use of is to reap group benefits without having to share
costs necessary for its maintenance (free-rider problem). Despite of this fact social life
flourishes. As such, Darwin’s theory faces a problem: how to uphold its basic
principles and yet explain this paradox?
Kin selection and reciprocal altruism are two possible answers to this paradox.
Group selection offers another path which gets often presented by the laity and
popularisers, and unfortunately sometimes even by its own
authors/advocates/proponents, as the way where altruism would not in result be
only an illusion. In such moments, expressions of dissatisfaction with how narrow
the “purely selfish” account of human nature is often appear.60 Also, a big problem
exists if, in any way, this value-based motivation drives scientists to save the “real”
human altruism because they see it as a morally right thing to do.61 The problem lies
60 Authors often devote space for such expressions in Prefaces (Introductions) and Conclusions
(Epilogues) of their books, which is perfectly fine if (A) they clearly distinct between philosophical
extensions (overlaps) and the actual scientific work and (B) they clearly distinguish whether they use
altruism/egoism (selfishness) in their psychological or biological meaning (for the distinction see main
following text). The actual scientific research in biology, is in fact on the ultimate level, led in
parsimonious Egoistic monism paradigm, but that says nothing about proximate psychological
mechanisms, which are in its service. It does not pose any threat to including genuine altruism
(genuine altruistic motivations) as the most effective way how to achieve the selfish biological goals
organism has. However, to infer from this fact conclusions about egoistic monism on (1) ultimate
psychological level (human motivation) or even (2) ultimate philosophical level (human nature) can
be very misleading and confusing, as can be similar general statements from the other end without
them making more detailed (A) and (B) specifications. For instance, D. S. Wilson in the introduction to
Darwin’s Cathedral (2002: 2) writes: “I do not believe that human nature is fundamentally selfish, such
that genuine altruism and morality become illusions.”
61 If it is the case, it brings to the table the age old problem of the interconnectedness between
a scientist’s motivation and any other hidden agendas crawling their way into the research which
inevitably casts shadows on its value-free objectives it strives for. Every scientific result needs to be
judged above all on the merits of its poignant quality and I do not assert that to accept money from
agendas driven institutions means, in this sense, to automatically discredit your research. On the other
hand it is not without interest to look at how many works of promoters of group selection accounts
had been funded by those striving for harmonization of faith and science, among other things of
which this might be the least of our concern, especially if we are in business of the scientific study of
religion (e.g., C. Boehm: Study of Free-Rider Suppression among Hunter-Gatherers – John Templeton
- 40 -
in the fact, that it is not just bias/prejudice which such motivations draw into the
research, but that they are also based on an error of confusing two different
meanings of the words altruism and selfishness. First meaning is the original natural
language meaning, which finds detailed and professional elaboration in the tradition
of moral philosophy (or psychology). Second, the transferred meaning, is the one to
which it was shifted in evolutionary biology.
This error is understandable among the general public, especially because it is
easily to be misguided toward it by famous metaphor of the selfish gene.62 However,
it is unforgivable for a specialist in the field. Evolutionary biology does not define
selfishness and altruism of the behaviour on the basis of conscious thought or
psychological motivations of the individual, i.e., the original meanings, which are
used in natural language, moral philosophy and psychology, but only in terms of
their impact on the fitness.63 The definition of both terms in evolutionary biology is as
follows: behaviour is selfish when it increases the fitness of the actor, relative to other
members of its group. Behaviour is altruistic when it increases the fitness of the
group, relative to other groups, and decreases the relative fitness of the actor within
the group (see Sober & Wilson, 1998).64
Foundation; C. Boehm: Cross-Cultural Survey of Altruistic Behavior – John Templeton Foundation;

C. Boehm and D. S.. Wilson: Evolution of Conflict Resolution and Forgiveness – John Templeton
Foundation; source: USC University of Southern California website, C. Boehm’s faculty profile
(http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003114)).
62 Although even here it is not seeing all arguments through, because as aptly observed by M. Ridley
(1996b: 193): “preferring the morality of group selection to the ruthlessness of individual struggle is to
prefer genocide to murder.” Similarly concise is also L. Keeley, when he says (1996: 158): “warfare is
ultimately not a denial of the human capacity for social cooperation, but merely the most destructive
expression of it.”
63 The question remains - fitness of what (gene, individual, group)? Furthermore, group selection
accounts introduced to the definition also the relative fitness (in addition to the absolute fitness) which
I devote more attention to in the part where I deal with the problem of fitness averaging.
64 The shifted meaning in the use of terms altruistic and selfish in evolutionary biology causes
a number of complications. Given that it is already a common and extended practice, the only thing
left to do is to always clearly and explicitly define what we conceive of these terms at any given
moment and how different this is meaning from the original normative meaning (see Wilson, 1992).
This problem is illustrated by an accurate example by J. Tooby, who called similar terms “meaning-
chameleons”(2012): “For example, using the definition of selfishness and altruism that biologists use,
a loving and self-sacrificing mother is acting selfishly, while a drug addicted mother who starves her
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Error of confusing this meaning with the original meaning leads some to think
that the standard individual-gene selection theories (kin selection, reciprocal
altruism) argue, that there is no genuine altruism in the world or that these theories
cannot explain it. Moreover that all psychological motivations of individuals are
always selfish and every good (altruistic) act is a sham and insincere.65 Thus some
conclude that there is a need for new theories that can take full-hearted altruism
seriously. But the opposite is true. These theories arose exactly in order to explain the
existence of genuine altruism, and according to them it developed because it was,
and still is, from the perspective of gene-replicators, the best possible strategy for
their own propagation (see Trivers, 1971). It is the genuine full-hearted altruism they
talk about, as the false altruism is easily detectable by control mechanisms.
Pretending is too challenging and/or expensive for the body and the price when
being detected is too high (see Frank, 1988).
To be fair, to see the group selection as always and necessarily motivated by
a desire to rescue the good reputation of humans would be very inaccurate. For non-
misled authors the psychological motivations of individuals are identically
sincere/genuine, their theories do in no way affect them and the only difference
between the two types of theories lies in what pressures they see as crucial in the
development of these sincere/genuine motivations. Some authors try to defend
themselves against such discrediting by arguing that group selection certainly does
not eliminate the conflict from the natural selection. On the contrary, as stated by
D. S. Wilson (2002: 10) it: “rather elevates it up the biological hierarchy, from among
individuals within groups to among groups within a larger population.” Thus he
effectively not only moves the conflict to another level, but also extends the scope of
children to give all her money to her dealer is and altruist (i.e. she is lowering her own fitness in a way
that increases a nonrelative’s).”
65 Therefore they vaguely confuse the kin selection/reciprocal altruism with the doctrine of
psychological egoism.
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its actual influence.66 Conflict-free are not even the proposed solutions of
mechanisms through which group selectionists try to overcome the extremely strong
within-group pressures, mechanisms by which is group selection supposed to
enforce altruistic traits that are otherwise disadvantageous for the individual. Social
control (including supervision and enforcement) is among the most frequently
promoted solutions of the fundamental problem of social life. Here, we have lightly
touched what might be, for us as scholars of religion, probably the most interesting
point in the theories of group selection in general. I will return to it in more detail
a little later on in this thesis.
How is the application of group selection to religion done? Now that we know
the basic claims of the theory ((A) – (D)) and also the major obstacles that must be
overcome in order to fulfil its claims (showing in what respect can religious groups
be taken and seen seriously as organisms in science; demonstrating that among-
group selective pressure can, in specific cases, be stronger than the within-group
selective pressure), it is time to see what specific steps need to be undertaken for this
fulfilment. From my perspective, there are four most important steps. First of all, the
relevant group must be identified. The fitness of individuals within that group must
be compared. Thirdly, compare the fitness of all groups in the overall population.
Finally, proceed to the most difficult step, which hides, compared to the previous
three steps, largest number of pitfalls for successful implementation of the theory
that D. S. Wilson (2002: 13) formulates as to: “compare these effects to determine the
net results of what evolves.” The main “analytical/creative” part of group
selectionist’s work, therefore, lies in subsequent comparison/evaluation of results of
the second and the third step.
66 Nevertheless, the purposeful use of neutral scientific results for subsequent construction of
arguments exceeding science cannot be ruled out. Although I am no supporter of critics that would
like to disqualify any scientific theory in advance only on the basis of alleged motivations, it is
a matter of interest to see what types of moral and political overlaps group selection tends to be
sometimes used. Normative statements include mainly pushing for hidden wisdom behind values
that underline loyalty to the group, communitarianism, promotion of the group’s welfare, prosocial
religiosity etc.
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When and where are we to find the cultural evolution in group selection
accounts, which is after all the main interest of this chapter? So far, it might seem
that, except for the moments when we chose religion as the defining characteristics
((A) and (C)), it is just a rivalry of two biological hypotheses that do not spill over to
the socio-cultural domain. Nevertheless we have already touched on the important
role that group selectionists attribute to the social control in dealing with the
fundamental problem of social life. Cultural evolution comes to the surface when
both parts click into each other.
Religious systems do in most cases include a special kind of ideological
interconnection of systems of ideas and moral systems, and as a result they can
develop a strong type of social control that could be used to explain the evolution of
certain social behavioural traits. For example, self-sacrificial altruistic behaviour has
always been a big puzzle for classical Darwinian theory. It is the most extreme kind
of altruistic behaviour whose existence from an evolutionary perspective
traditionally encounters the above mentioned problem - how could similar
behavioural traits have evolved when they are so disadvantageous to individual-
within-group fitness?
The answer of group selection accounts is social control as a form of
supervision and enforcement of such behaviour (i.e., self-sacrificial behaviour).
Supervision and enforcement is, in itself, a low-cost altruism, as the individual uses
his own energy (resources) and exposes himself to the risks, though minimal, for the
good of the group.67 However, group selectionists also view more extreme kinds of
altruistic behaviours (which carry large risks for the coerced group members and
thus more profit for the group) as a product of the process of social control. For
group selection theory, this procedure is a typical way68 of dealing with the objection
that group selection would have to be exceptionally strong to oppose within-group
67 To make someone to perform a public good is itself a public good. Economists label this issue as
a “second-order public goods problem.”
68 See “amplification of altruism” in Sober & Wilson (1998: chapter 4).
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selective pressures. In this fashion they try to argue that it need not be the case, not
all the time and not necessarily.
The way in which proponents of the group selection theory deal with specific
objections against its basic theorems, is used here as an example of the kind of
arguments they generally use. But the previous problem is too specific and we
cannot allow it to divert our attention from the essential differences between the two
camps. Moreover, the demonstration of argumentation could be confusing, as social
control is used at some point by both sides when explaining issues of altruism. To
avoid that, let us go back once more to the very foundations of their solutions and
look at the predictions each offers.
The standard neo-Darwinian individual-gene selection theory (the Theory of
“Kin Selection” as well as the Theory of “Reciprocal Altruism”) explains altruistic
behavioural traits as beneficial for genes (real replicators), which the individual
organism, the real executive in the realm of cause and effect, carries. It is only
because of these effects that it could have developed. By contrast, group selection
argues that there is a trait of “self-sacrificial” altruism, a behavioural trait, which
results in damaging the executives (both the individual organism and its genes) in an
effort to bring benefits to the group. Such a trait could be selected for in evolution
only thanks to strong group-against-group competition, where there could have
originated a pressure for its development. As I mentioned a moment ago, to talk
about a factor of social control can be confusing as it is used at some point by both
parties. However, each party has a different focus which I will try to demonstrate on
different predictions that can be inferred from both positions.
Standard individual-gene selection predicts that individuals will behave
altruistically only if this altruism ultimately leads to an advantage for their gene (in
themselves or in their relatives). They (individuals) will be restrained/reluctant
towards its extreme self-sacrificing form. It is not going to form a part of their natural
profile, they would have to be trained against this restrain/reluctance or forced to
obtain it and it would be rare in a population. There would be a need of a constant

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social control for its implementation. Contrarily, group selection accounts argue that
social control, in the form of enforcement and education, was in our evolutionary
history long enough and was sufficiently distinctive to equip “current” individuals
with propensities for a self-sacrificing form of altruism. Thus, this behavioural trait
has become part of our natural profile, which should necessarily lead to the
prediction that it should now be widespread in the population and we should feel
impelled to act altruistically without any external pressure. Its implementation
should be simple, without the need to overcome anything.
But precisely “therein lies the problem,” and it can serve as a concentrated
example of the differences between the arguments of both sides. In a particular
variant of an economic game, specifically the Public Goods game,69 there is an
opportunity to punish at one’s own expense those who free-ride. From empirical
studies using this game, we know that people tend to punish free-riders even when it
costs them their own resources and they do not automatically benefit in the form of
direct enhancement of their reputation from this behaviour.70 Group selectionists see
in such behaviour a manifestation of the “self-sacrificing” altruism trait and therefore
evidence of the influence of group selection. On the other hand, individual-gene
selectionists claim it is a part of the everyday efforts of a person living in a group to
protect their own interests and that it is therefore far better to see it as a result of
individual-gene selection.71 According to the latter, such altruistic behaviour is
69 In the public goods game, each player receives the same amount of money and has the option to
decide how much of this amount “to invest” into a common “pool” of the group. Joint property is
subsequently multiplied and divided back equally among all players. If all invest maximum, all
receive the largest sum of money. However, if you give more than others, the others begin to profit at
your expense. Being a free-rider, is beneficial for an individual since he retains whatever he/she did
not invest and also shares a proportion of the joint property. In the classical form of the game, which is
played for a few rounds, the free-riding attitude eventually prevails completely and the invested
amount is successively reduced to zero.
70 Players do not meet before or after the game meaning that maximal anonymity is guaranteed.
71 For an example of arguments of competing hypotheses seeking to show parsimonious ways to
interpret these experimental results used by proponents of group selection see Delton et al. (2010).
Similarly, Baumard et al. (2013: 77) when re-evaluating/rethinking results of experimental games so
often seen as the hallmark of selfless altruism, assert: “in all these situations, participants act as if they
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always accompanied either by expectations of reciprocity, or by triggering the
mechanism of reputational management. It is therefore a product of our intuitions,
evolved in a collaborative environment of small non-anonymous groups we are
configured for due to our evolutionary history. Similarly to how we begin to salivate
at the authentic representation of food in advertising, although food intake does not
follow, this “artificial” situation (guaranteed anonymity; playing for a single round)
initiates a kind of “instinctive” response (from the world of our evolutionary
prehistory, where anonymity or games for one round could not be guaranteed), even
though it misses the target.
Now we are getting to the core of why I actually devoted this part of my thesis
to group selection. That is, to an exploration of how the principles of group selection
used in some theories of sociocultural evolution address religion. Before that,
however, it has to be noted that there are also purely biological treatises working
with group selection that do not step beyond the boundaries of genetic evolution.
While those treatises may be marginal in biology, they are interesting for the overall
objectives of this work, especially when they subsequently engage in an attempt to
uncover the effects of genetic evolution of our species on the origins and
development of religious behaviour. This is because purely biological accounts
working with group selection also fall into the study of religion from the unifying
evolutionary perspective. They are, therefore, discussed in those parts of the thesis
dedicated to the EWCE approach, where they compete with the widely accepted
theories of genetic evolution of our species using standard individual-gene selection.
Group selection theories thus complete the picture of this EWCE approach.
Nevertheless, given the objectives of this section of my thesis, from now on, accounts
dealing with “genetic evolution only” shall cease to interest us. On the contrary, we
will focus our attention on those treatises working with group selection that also
venture intentionally beyond the borders of genetic evolution.
had agreed on a contract or, as we claim, as if morality had evolved in a cooperative yet very
competitive environment.”
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D. S. Wilson is one of the prime examples.72 He argues that it is crucial to not
only see between-group selective pressures as a strong and at times dominating
evolutionary force (which is a common postulate of all theories of group selection
indiscriminately), but rather seeing cultural evolution as a process that takes place
largely at the group level. Another, and for our purposes, an even more important
step is to venture beyond the boundaries of genetic identification of groups into the
area of determining the groups on the basis of uniform patterns of behaviour. Such
uniform patterns of behaviour are defined as dependent only on social norms, not on
genes, which designates the group as a uniformly functioning moral community. In
D. S. Wilson’s definition of an adaptive unit through moral community, it is clearly
visible that he sees group-wide traits as culturally rather than genetically
determined. Group-wide traits do not rise up from the genes of individuals to
influence their behaviour and subsequently influence the whole group. Rather, they
are culturally propagated through religious beliefs and social norms. 73 What is
radical about this step is that it disconnects a link between genes and behaviours so
firmly held in some other accounts. The link that alone can guarantee the
72 In the works of writers such as D. S. Wilson, it is often hard to determine where to put a dividing
line between genetic and sociocultural evolution. And it is not because this division would be hard to
clearly define. It is rather that these authors are blurring the boundary and it costs a considerable
effort to distinguish whether they are already earnestly talking about a new kind of process with
special rules that requires our close attention, or whether they are just trying to bring figurative
language in to illustrate what they mean, using the support of linguistic devices such as metaphor and
analogy and transfer the terms from biological processes in this fashion. Often in these cases, it is not
inconsistency, but a product of their metaphysical position in which they are convinced that
evolutionary theory is a meta-framework, revealing the immanent principle cutting across many
levels of the universe. Let us take as an illustration this D. S. Wilson’s citation (2002: 35): “Religions
appeal to many people in part because they promise transformative change – a path to salvation. The
word evolution means change, so it would seem that evolution and religion share much in common. It
is unfortunate that evolution is so often associated with genetic evolution, a slow process that gives
the impression of an incapacity for change over the time scales that matter most to living people
struggling with their problems.”
73 In addition, D. S. Wilson in several places, although not quite as clearly as we would expect him to,
speaks about the need to expand too narrow a range of genetic evolution with cultural evolution when
covering human evolution (see 2002).
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meaningfulness of the claim that this behaviour is a phenotypic effect of Darwinian
adaptation that evolved through natural selection.74
After these steps, follows the decision as to what kind of time span do we
want to cover. With a longer span we will often get interested in creating a model of
interconnectedness between socio-cultural evolution and genetic evolution. At that
moment, we will follow several thousands of generations of Hunter-Gatherers. That
may be at times confusing as in some parts the autonomous process of socio-cultural
evolution starts to be closely tied together with autonomous genetic evolution, and
may lead to overlaps with results delivered by EWCE approach. A complete blend
occurs especially when the cultural evolution is seen as a strong player who can
change the parameters of the evolutionary process by selecting for traits that would
be never developed by genetic evolution alone. If we choose a shorter time span, we
will follow only faster socio-cultural evolution of modern social groups (in the words
of D. S. Wilson (2002: 37): “fast-paced evolutionary process with cultural rather than
genetic mechanisms of inheritance”), which will help us more explicitly reveal the
differences of both autonomous processes (see point (D)). Nevertheless, the attention
in both cases, at this stage, is focused only on the socio-cultural evolutionary process
and the difference lies only in the length of the time covered, i.e., if we cover
a shorter time, we still assume that all principles work just as if we cover a longer
74 Such arguments see as a necessity the preservation of the diversity of behaviours reflecting the
diversity of genes causing these behaviours, because without it, there is no way how to connect
phenotypic effect to biological natural selection. Without it, we would not have a way of keeping the
conception in which we see something (in this case a given behaviour) as a phenotypic effect of genes
(as something dependent on genes/genetically influenced behaviour) in general. In a sense, of course,
every behaviour is dependent on genes, and therein lies the danger for informational payoffs of all
theories that attempt to explain various forms of behaviour on the genetic basis. Unless all of these
forms are anchored in the genetic base, it does not tell us much. Similarly, the fact that people have
lungs does not inform us much about whether their political views are conservative or liberal. For
a comprehensive development of a theory of phenotypic effects that expand/are located outside of
bodies of individual organisms, see R. Dawkins (1982).
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time, but we will not be able to show these principles at the genetic level, because its
“change recording” requires long periods of time.75
D. S. Wilson’s group selection account states that, like genes, even the cultural
variations can spread at the expense of other cultural variations within a group or
can cause the group carrying the given cultural variant to expand at the expense of
other groups. Although it makes use of the analogy with genetic selection, it does not
mean that the socio-cultural-multilevel-selection evolutionary process would not
require specialized mechanisms to direct it, quite the contrary. These mechanisms are
essential for the autonomy of the process. Despite this, D. S. Wilson still works
mainly with “traditional” psychological mechanisms (traditional in terms of
evolutionary psychology that searches for them with the help of standard individual-
gene selection) which are automated and in most cases not subject to conscious
processing, and he just tries to argue that their origin is different. The element of the
conscious un-reflectivity has interesting and important consequences, as it allows the
theory to see the culture and its development, in most cases, as independent of the
intentions of the executives/agents. The expression “in most cases” I use purposefully
here, because the theory does not say that conscious processes could not be at certain
times important agents in cultural evolution.
Where he speaks about the specific mechanisms of cultural evolution, he
claims they are not only largely unconscious, but in some cases also distributed. This
yields a radical innovation closely related to the group selection’s definition of an
organism applied on human social groups. That is, as long as the surviving and
reproducing adaptive unit is the whole group and not just the individual, as in the
standard individual-gene selection, even the unconscious mechanisms operate at the
level of the whole group and not only at the level of the individual. D. S. Wilson is in
this context clear (2002: 33): “If the individual is no longer a privileged unit of
selection, it is no longer a privileged unit of cognition. We are free to imagine
75In fact, “time” is here, as in other evolutionary treatises, of course, only a proxy for the number of
required generations.
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individuals in a social group connected in a circuitry that gives the group the status
of the brain and the individual the status of the neuron.”
To increase scientific credibility of the concept of a ‘group brain’, frowned
upon by many as taken out of science-fiction, its advocates frequently use metaphors
or analogies from the realm of social insects such as of ants or bees. However, those
are in many respects diametrically different from other social species and its use for
illustration is not random.76 In the case of social insects, the self-sacrificial altruism
(as an extreme form of altruistic behaviour in which an individual harms oneself for
the good of the group) really occurs and in quantities that we would seek in vain in
any other socially living organism. However, there is an essential difference:
reproduction in social insects is a privilege given to few chosen individuals. Sacrifice
for the good of the group, which can in the extreme case take the form of suicide
attack of a bee or the creation of a whole caste of “eunuchs” who dedicate their entire
lives to slave labour or combat deployment, is thus motivated by benefiting the
queen, who is always the “martyr’s” mother or sister.77 Thus there is no need to
postulate here group selection and see the trait of self-sacrificing altruism without the
benefit for individual’s genes. To explain this kind of behaviour it is enough to use
the theory of individual kin selection (increasing the benefit of one’s own genes in
the bodies of others).
Mathematical conditions (models) under which group-level selection works,
has yet to be found in any real world empirical data observed in any other social
species. To this point draw our attention especially experimental biologists, for
whom the praxis is what really matters. And it is not that they did not see, did not
want to see or could not assess the importance of theory, but rather the fact that
when there is a disputed claim between two different theories whose models are
76 Deepening of our understanding of social insects is one of the great inspirations of renewed interest
in group selection. This is most visible in the figure of E. O. Wilson, a Harvard biology professor, the
holder of two Pulitzer prices (1979 and 1991) for his works On Human Nature and The Ants, and who is
considered to be a founding father of sociobiology.
77 If groups really were the basic units in human evolution, should not we have shifted more towards
this kind of social-insect-like reproduction strategy by now?
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capable of achieving the same theoretical sophistication and mathematical accuracy,
they tend to decide the argument by the assessment of the contribution they can
produce in praxis. It is for them, in a sense, suspicious and quite informative at the
same time, that most attempts to defend group selection, focus on examples of logical
and mathematical accuracy of its models, rather than examples of what (in the sense:
how much) and how (in the sense: how well) is it able to explain from the world “out
there.”78 Evolutionary biologist J. Coyne even claims to be unaware of a single
behaviour in animals that is completely disadvantageous to individuals but useful
for groups (see Coyne, 2009). For another critical assessment of group selection’s
ability to promote useful and productive research see the recent review articles by
West et al. (2008) and Bourke (2011).
As with any evolutionary account, the evolutionary account of religion must
be capable of clearly showing that it can fulfil and how it can fulfil all the principles
of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Only then can it be an implementation of
a functional theory, and not just a misleading metaphor or analogy often causing
more harm than good. Such isomorphic implementations are successfully created in
various fields, for example, in simulations of artificial life forms in cybernetics. But
there is a fundamental difference between creating a simulation of new forms of life
and modelling them according to evolutionary biological laws discovered in real life
forms, and arguing that the same evolutionary laws are also ruling other forms of
existing things (e.g., religions, political systems, etc.). To evaluate how successfully
did this or that evolutionary account meet the principles of neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory, forms the basic frame of my critical analysis. It is motivated by
the question: do similar efforts actually bring anything in addition to metaphors and
78It should be noted that these experimental biologists are mostly proponents of the opposing
individual-gene selection hypothesis. Their dismissive opinion is probably most accurately
summarized by J. Coyne (2012): “In the end, group selection, while innately appealing, has not helped
us understand very much about nature. We could reply to advocates of group selection as Laplace
replied to Napoleon when queried about why God was absent from Laplace’s great book on celestial
mechanics: ‘I have no need of that hypothesis.’”
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analogies, something that would extend our concept of “history” (cultural change
over time)? To reiterate, these principles include variation, selection and retention.
In order to successfully identify all three of these mechanisms, we first need to
define some other essentials in which they are fulfilled.79 Among these are mainly:
what constitutes the adaptive unit (unit of selection), the fitness of the unit, the
selective pressure of a given level, and the mechanisms of inheritance and
transmission.80 Yet before the time comes to devote an appropriate space to this
critical analysis I will in greater detail introduce the group selection accounts that are
most relevant for Religious Studies.
Group Selection Accounts in Religious Studies

As I mentioned above, group selection accounts come to Religious Studies mainly
from the work of D. S. Wilson. His model of the evolution of religions is built upon
a combination of Dual Inheritance Theory, presented by P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd
(a gene-culture co-evolution model using cultural evolution), and the adaptationist
program with special emphasis on group selection effects. According to Wilson,
group selection plays a major role in cultural evolution by creating unifying systems
(systems that unite people into adaptive units of which religion is a special case).
This is, according to Wilson, because these systems (of which morality is a central
phenomenon81) produce a specific kind of pressure, in absence of which would group
selection effects stay close to nothing (as e.g., in genetic evolution). Namely this
pressure amplifies between-group selection forces (by increasing differences and
competition between groups), while at the same time decreases within-group
selection forces (by decreasing differences and competition within group).
79 As D. S. Wilson wittily notes (2002: 40): “like laws and sausages, the manufacture of adaptation is
not a pretty sight!”
80 That is, whether and how are qualities of successful religious groups passed (with modifications) to
the succeeding religious groups.

81 For extended argument why this should be so see Sober & Wilson (1998) and also Wilson (2002).
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In genetic evolution, there is no such a pressure and genetic variant stays at
low frequency within the group unless it increases the chances of survival and
reproduction of its bearer. Group selection favours genetic variant even if it would
decrease the fitness of its bearer relative to other individuals within the same group,
thus causing it to spread and dominate in the group, if and only if, this genetic
variant would increase the fitness of the whole group relative to other groups.
However, this is highly unlikely and according to most geneticist and evolutionary
biologists almost non-existent in nature. Cultural mutation, on the contrary, can be
spread in the group with the help of various mechanisms (conformist bias, prestige
bias, rational thought, social control mechanisms etc.), despite decreasing the fitness
of its bearer, thus making it possible for previously rare behaviour or individual-
fitness-decreasing behaviour to become common within the group.
D. S. Wilson subsequently argues that religion is exceptionally effective in
spreading cultural mutations within groups, creating human groups that are
sufficiently stable and setting the stage for rapid cultural evolution. These groups can
be understood, as needs of this approach dictate, as adaptive units (organisms), 82 and
following repeated group level selection83 helps to spread traits which would not
evolve by genetic evolution alone (selfless altruism as opposed to “just” selfish
altruism etc.).84 Hence, religion is a group-level adaptation which increases
cooperativeness and cohesiveness of the group and its otherworldly elements are
understood as proximate mechanisms that motivate these group-level adaptive
behaviours (see Wilson, 2005; Whitehouse, 2002; 200885).
82 Such organisms/groups/adaptive units are defined by their behavioural paterns/practices which are
seen as products of their moral systems and concomitant social norms. The whole concept relies on the
assumption of high behavioural uniformity of such moral communities (uniformity within groups
that creates at the same time bigger differences among groups) that would not be there based just on
their genetic structure.
83 Also called “among-group selection” (Wilson, 2002: 22).
84 For the distinction and its definition see following text. For a similar argument focusing on the
evolution of morals see also C. Boehm (1999 and 2012) and his Guarded Egalitarianism Hypothesis. I
devote a special place to its detailed introduction below.
85 According to H. Whitehouse (2008:39), the imagistic mode of religiosity “generates extremely cohesive
coalitions” and a likely trigger for its emergence was an increasing competition for scarce resources,
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The group selection approach is being extensively used also by, in the current
CSR present but far less influential,86 E. O. Wilson’s sociobiological evolutionary
account of religion (for early sociobiology see Wilson, 1975; 1978 and 1998, or
Lumsden & Wilson, 1981).87 This account follows a similar trail and reaches the same
conclusions as D. S. Wilson’s account, with the exception of granting cultural
evolution an autonomy from genetic evolution, as does D. S. Wilson or even
memetics (for more details see also “culture on a leash concept” in the chapter
“Memetic Accounts”).
Another author, with relevance to CSR,88 who assumes effects of group
selection on the emergence of altruistic traits, is C. Boehm (see 1999b), who
thus being a group-level adaptation (Whitehouse, 2002: 309) to such conditions (providing cohesion
necessary for hunting of larger game animals and territorially-driven predation and warfare). At this
point, it is also necessary to mention that the theory of H. Whitehouse has to be assigned to a number
of categories, as he is one of those authors who work with wide range of concepts, mix various
theoretical frameworks and evade a clean cut categorization to a single group. According to what part
of his theory we pay attention to, we are going to encounter him again in “by-productivist accounts”
(basic elements of religion in his approach are comprised of by-products), and his theory also can be
classified as a “dual inheritance account” (there is a genuine evolutionary process of religion).
86 The main reason behind is notoriously problematic mind-blindness and the selective use of
anecdotal evidence that is supposed to connect putative fitness-motivating factors in religious

behaviours with ostensible fitness consequences. The majority of sociobiological explanations lack
causal accounts of how these ostensible material functions produce religious practices, especially
when contra-cases show that similar practices arise or endure independently or regardless of material
need. S. Atran and A. Norenzayan introduce in this respect an example of an aspiration to explain
ritual human sacrifice by a relationship between individuals needing protein and a lack of large game
as a source of protein in the environment. E. O. Wilson (1978) makes use of this argument in the case
of Aztec cannibalistic sacrifice in animal-poor environment of Mesoamerica, yet as Atran
& Norenzayan point out (2004: 718). “game was abundant for Mesoamerica’s Lowland Maya, who
also practiced human sacrifice.”
87 Interestingly, even though E. O. Wilson originally favoured the Theory of Reciprocal Altruism as
a best of possible explanatory models of altruism on the grounds that group selection is
problematically weak, in a recent “comeback” of sociobiology, there is a visible tendency to converge
the theoretical bases of both Wilsons. This is clear, for example, from the quotation of their joint
publication summarizing sociobiology’s new theoretical foundation in the form of a paraphrase of
famous one-phrase summary of Torah by Rabbi Hillel (Wilson & Wilson, 2007a: 345): “Selfishness
beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.”
Both authors lately combined forces to promote group selection also on more popular-science level,
see Wilson & Wilson (2007b or 2008).
88 His interest in this respect is to explain how supernatural retribution helps to enforce local moral
codes, concluding (Boehm, 2008: 148) that: “supernatural sanctioning appears rather unpredictably, as
a ‘backup’ for the everyday social sanctioning by real people which includes social pressure,
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developed yet another distinct social selection model in humans. Social selection here
takes place by social preferences being expressed (sometimes referred to as
sanctioning selection). The model, known as Guarded Egalitarianism Hypothesis,
addressing evolution of social control (see Boehm, 2000), makes use of R. D.
Alexander’s (1987) concept of indirect reciprocity (selection by reputation, different
from kin selection or direct reciprocity, also very close to what is today’s narrower
usage of costly signalling) which was embedded in standard individual-gene
selection model (leaving group selection model that works through direct group
conflict alone, albeit possible, still unverifiable due to the great unknown of warfare
recurrence in the Paleolithic). Boehm subsequently combines the concept of indirect
reciprocity with enhanced group selection, and adds as important additional
mechanism “free-rider suppression” (which he holds works on the phenotypic as
well as genotypic levels, although forces are weaker on the latter). Also important is
another of Boehm’s additions, which is, by no means, self evident, that the most
effective human free-riders have been alpha bullies.
Free-rider suppression on phenotypes means not allowing free-riders to
express their free-riding tendencies, for example through moralistic aggression (R. L.
Trivers’ term; see Trivers, 1971). In another words, it operates through the threat of
punishment, resulting in free-riding genes staying in place. Free-rider suppression on
the genotypic level means punishments for not refraining from the free-riding
behaviour and results in free-riding genes dying out (through capital punishment,
ostracism). This type of social selection, according to Boehm, sets a path, not only for
altruistic traits, but also for the emergence of the beginnings of conscience89 through
the mechanism of self-restraint/self-control (one starts to worry about the outcomes,
e.g., group turning on oneself), which became an important feature of individuals
ostracism, group shaming, ejection, and capital punishment.” However, he notes that larger samples
using “Pleistocene-appropriate” hunter-gatherer ethnographies are needed for further testing.
89 A conservative date most of archaeologists would agree upon, for conscience being in place,
coincides with human cultural modernity, about 45 000 years ago (Boehm, 2012).
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who were reproductively successful. For the extended argument on how moral 90
communities were essential for the appearance of egalitarian societies see Boehm
(2012).
Free-rider suppression mechanism was selected for due to the novel problems
inherent in hunting large game91 (equitable workload - cooperation in hunting) in our
ancestral environment (equitable shares – cooperation in sharing). To overcome
pressures we needed curtail our hierarchical nature. That set the stage for altruistic
traits that prevent would-be dominant males from taking the resources of others or
even hoarding resources they themselves have acquired. For the extended argument
on the evolutionary origins of egalitarianism see Boehm (1999). Free-rider
suppression has the effect of reducing individual selection within groups (reducing
phenotypic variation at the within-group level), while increasing it at the between-
group level, and making it easier for selection to act on any existing cultural variation
between groups (see Boehm, 1997). Moreover, this selection pressure was stable in
our ancestral environment (Pleistocene hunter-gatherers) for a long enough period of
time for a new evolutionary trait to evolve.92
Another source of group selection approach in the Study of Religions could be
found within some memetic evolutionary theories. It is mainly S. Blackmore (1999),
who uses the concept and in classical memetic accounts, she is an exception. But the
analysis of her conceptualization of origin and development of religion can be found
in the chapter devoted to memetics.
The notion of group selection appears in CSR also with Dual Inheritance
Theory. The coevolutionary model by P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd is cautious with
reference to the group selection – rather than trying to prove its effect and influence,
the authors engage in hypothetical modelling of conditions that theoretically enable
90 Moral sense is basically a sophisticated defence mechanism that helps us to survive and thrive in
groups, while handicapping psychopaths it enhances altruists’ survival.
91 The advent of which came about 250 000 years ago.
92 C. Boehm’s estimate is somewhere between 25 000 and 75 000 years (that is, between one to three
thousand human generations). For comparison E. O. Wilson suggests 25 000 years (that is one
thousand generations in humans for any new evolutionary feature to evolve).
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group selection to to occur. In those instances, when they entertain the idea of group
selection and use the group as adaptive unit, they usually refer to it by the term
“crude superorganism” (Richerson & Boyd, 1999), which nicely illustrates their
careful approach to the “organismic concept of human groups.” Nevertheless, they
count on group selection and use it in their work (for more see the chapter “Dual
Inheritance Accounts”).
Critical Analysis of Group Selection Accounts

Following a presentation of the applications of group selection to explanations of
religious phenomena, and after making its assertions more specific, explicitly relating
individual opinions to the whole position, and after shedding light on some of their
assumptions and argumentative patterns, I come now to the critical analysis itself.
Specifically, I will assess to what degree these applications are able to meet all criteria
given by the neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection as defined in the
introduction. By this, I intend to show to what extent this pursuit can be judged
either as a legitimate extension of this theory or as its misuse as bad metaphor or
poor analogy. First of all, let me reiterate the criteria of neo-Darwinian theory. Within
a system there are replicators (units that can create high fidelity copies of themselves)
which compete with each other for limited resources and if the conditions are ideal
they will grow in numbers exponentially. In the copying process these units
sometimes suffer accidental errors (mutations) that might result in an increase in
replicating frequency. Such errors, which are inadvertent/unintended/involuntary,
have as a consequence their gradual accumulation in given population. This process
is mechanistic and the replicators’ success is judged solely by the number of their
copies.
Do group selection accounts meet the criteria? When we encounter an
“evolutionary” process in which units are shaped on many levels by the
deliberate/voluntary actions of their bearers, such group selection account begin to

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violate the condition of the accidentality of errors (mutations). System of beliefs,
values, ritual behaviours and other elements that constitute the religion of a specific
group are all subjected to the “engineering practices” of intentional agents. No
matter what the status/standing of these agents is, from the very last forgotten,
unimportant, nameless pawns of the masses to the memorable victors, founders,
reformers or elite leaders, only the degree but not kind of our problem is changed.
And that problem is the non-randomness of the agents’ purposeful actions and their
ability to modify, adjust and tailor the units of transmission to fit their needs. The
admittance of design/intention on this level simply violates the all-important
randomness principle.
Similar violations also concern the principle of success evaluation. The theory
of natural selection in this case is very restrictive and the only admissible
method/evidence is the number of replicators within the population under
consideration. Yet group selection accounts neglect the process of replications of
groups (it never is about copies of groups; in fact, group is not what replicates; there
never is a set of groups in which some groups would be more successful than others
in duplicating/replicating themselves; group itself is not a replicator). Group
selection accounts use different success evaluations altogether when they judge the
success of religious systems. We do not find statements that monotheistic traditions
replicate better than polytheistic traditions and therefore there is larger number of
monotheistic religions than polytheistic religions in the whole of population of
religions in the world (see Pinker, 2012). And that is because the success of religious
traditions is judged on the grounds of arbitrarily established analogies of success,
such as wealth, influence, power, longevity, territorial expansion or size. 93 But the
problem lies in the fact that these analogies are burdened with anthropocentrism and
93D. Sperber similarly criticizes societal-level fitness. In his open communication to the Evolution and
Human Behavior Society, Sperber asks (1996): “Is fitness a matter of having descendants with
a recognizable ideology? Of population size? Of variations in size (expansion)? Of duration? Of some
weighted combination of size and duration? What of social systems that expand rapidly at the expense
of heritability (empires)?”
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consequently, we assess their validity according to our own cultural background.
Additionally, this “success” is ascribed to the whole entity not only to the entity
founded on the chain end of all descendants (see Pinker, 2012).
My other criticism relates to the definition of organism. Religious groups do
not meet the basic definitional conditions of organism. This objection is very similar
to pointing out troubles that group selection accounts have when it comes to
justifying their choice of relevant group (D. S. Wilson sometimes refers to them as
human societal organisms, see 2002: 37). And as I have argued before, the choice of
a relevant group is at the very core of every attempt to apply group selection theory
successfully. Nevertheless, achieving more accurate (unambiguous, sufficiently
satisfactory) definition of a group that would suit the needs of group selection theory
amounts to much larger problem than would appear at first sight. To a certain extent,
it is the same issue that we know from our own discipline of how to justify
a demarcation (narrowing down) of certain notions such as culture, identity or
religion. Such a demarcation would help to show that group adaptivness is not an
empty word that could be arbitrarily assigned to any phenomenon, which seems to
resemble vaguely defined traits of groupishness. Too often we may encounter
“obvious” adaptive traits being assigned to almost anything in popular opinion.
Every sneaky means of catching prey is an adaptation, every colour is in the right
place for perfect camouflage, every smell and shape of a flower petal is there to
attract just the right pollinator etc. You cannot “miss” them when you watch flocks of
birds, schools of fish, herds of deer, ant colonies, etc., that are “visible to naked eye”
even as whole species or enormous ecosystems. The whole planet can be seen in this
sense as one big organism (Gaia Hypothesis). And some authors do not mind how
many levels they skip to reach the desired “obvious” results or they switch
perspectives every time they bump into new features. Such perspectives, based in
evolutionary theory, need to be held consistently but if they were, they would yield
contradictory results.
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I acknowledge that this kind of axiomatic view of every group as an adaptive
unit is not present within the modern group selection accounts that I review here.
What remains, however, is a dire need to base studies on much larger samples and
especially randomly chosen samples, without which the doubts of cherry-picking of
theory-confirming cases will remain to cloud its implications/conclusions. D. S.
Wilson (2005) attempted to take this step when he tested his major evolutionary
hypotheses about religion with a random sample of 35 religions drawn from a 16-
volume encyclopaedia of world religions. However, as well noted by J. Bulbulia and
M. Frean (see 2009), even though randomly assigned, the sample was not chosen
from a randomly selected population. The encyclopaedia from which the research
draws its samples, records only historical cases, that is, victors that have already
proven to be “adaptive” in the sense of Wilson’s theory.
Evolutionary biologists, because of their professional training, are sensitive to
similar offenses. Cognitive/evolutionary scientists of religion must build this
sensitivity gradually and as scientists in any other discipline they must try to achieve
it also with more precise definitions. The question remains to what extent they are
successful so far and what the subsequent effects of accurate definitions are on the
theory in question. My conclusion in this section is that group selection accounts
have so far failed to provide a definition of a group that would be needed for them to
successfully defend and maintain their claims. Group selection definitions of a group
continue to suffer from arbitrariness and ambiguity. Their choice of determining
characteristics, which necessarily omits other characteristics, is still too vague. For
example, D. S. Wilson suggests a criterion of “trait-group” (1975) which allows him
to define a group time and again differently depending on what trait he is currently
interested in. His goal then becomes the evolutionary history of a particular trait
(e.g., altruistic trait) and the characteristics of the trait will determine how the group
will be circumscribed (Wilson, 2002: 15; footnote 5): “It is the localized nature of
social interactions and not sharp boundaries that form the basis of multilevel
selection theory.”
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This solution, although seemingly natural and meaningful, brings with it
a number of other problems. It is, for example, necessary for a particular trait to be
always associated with a specific activity as this activity determines exactly one type
of group. Yet such a condition is very hard to meet with most of the traits we are
interested in when we study religions in humans. To strengthen the solution, D. S.
Wilson states that in biology (2002: 16): “the groups are decided by the biology of the
organism, not the whim of the biologist.” But he fails to mention what kind of
troubles we would get in if we relied solely on biology for definitions of human
groups throughout the evolutionary history of our species from its beginnings to the
present.
There is a huge variability in human groups. Our ability to expand (to some
extent cross/overcome – figuratively speaking) biological limitations allows us to
function (interact) in various kinds of groups which differ in the ways and levels of
interaction as well as in size. Biology is not going to be very helpful when we address
several groups, differing in size, function, goals, interaction etc., when from
a biological point of view all the participants are the same.94 Some authors define
group as any subset of interacting individuals (two or more), where the interaction is
frequent and more intensive than the interaction between random individuals from
the same population (see Queller, 1992).95
94 If D. S. Wilson meant the biology of the organism as an analogy for, for example, the biology of
religious group, it remains a mystery what that could be and in what domain of science it will be met.
We might quickly reach the conclusion that it has been successfully pursued for more than a century
by sociology. But such an analogy would be confusing as the initial example from biology is
meaningful, only if it helps to determine the way of organizing and functioning of the group, based on
limitations and predeterminations given from the lower (more basic/profound) level, i.e., biological
level. In such figurative use, in which there is a transfer of rule to the next level, the only thing we
would be allegedly stating is that the organization and functioning of a group is determined by the
organization and functioning of that group. That would, of course, be a tautology and would not get
us far.
95 S. Pinker points out that if we choose such a criterion, and there might not be any other option for
group selectionists, we lose sight of or even brush away fundamental psychological differences
between groups. Only such an artificial step would allow us to see them and work with them as if
they were equivalent. In his own words (Pinker, 2012): “While mathematically speaking one can
identify a ‘group’ with any arbitrary set, in practice using a single construct for a pair of siblings,
a person holding a door open for a stranger, a waitress and a customer, a married couple, a street
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My criticism of the selection of a relevant group may be better understood, if I
rephrase it as a criticism of the way group selection accounts define an organism.
Conventional biological definition sees organism as a unit which is adaptive with
respect to many traits. It is a bundle of phenotypic effects which are intertwined in
such a fashion that the survival of each gene is dependent upon the survival of other
genes. This is, by the way, also the reason why genes cooperate and join forces to
create individual bodies in the first place. As they subsequently share with all the
others the only way out to next bodies in the following generation, R. Dawkins (2012)
speaks in this context of the “same/shared exit route.”
You cannot consider an organism to be something that behaves adaptively
only in one context but not in others (see Sterelny & Grifffiths, 1999). Human groups
therefore do not meet the standard conditions to be considered vehicles for natural
selection. For example, a single human being behaves as a single organism in many
contexts. He/she moves as a single unit, eats as a single unit, reproduces as a single
unit, struggles for survival as a single unit. But as we have seen, the concept of group
trait can change the definition of organism (superorganism) again and again with
every change of observed/examined trait. In this concept, an organism can be an
adaptive unit in regards to one trait (chosen as important for the moment) while
other traits it carries can be deliberately marginalized, ignored or go unnoticed.96
In support of the groups-as-organisms view, authors sometimes use the
advances in evolutionary biology made since the sixties. Some try to illustrate these
shifts with several radical theories introduced in the seventies. These theories
basically state that it appears likely that a change/transition can take place from
groups of organisms to groups as organisms. In short this means that single
organisms are themselves highly integrated social groups. For example, L. Margulis
gang, a traditional band or tribe, a nation, and an empire conceals the significant psychological
differences among them.”
96 The fundamental difficulty in specifying and defending any group trait is to show that it really
cannot be reduced to individual members’ traits that just happened to be shared by individual
members of the group. As G. C. Williams famously noted “a fleet herd of deer” might really be just
a herd of fleet deer.
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(see 1970) argued that eukaryotic cells are actually symbiotic communities of bacteria
whose members led a more autonomous existence in the distant past.
However, even this view has rather damaging consequences. First of all, the
analogy to such impressive and extraordinary transitions which evolutionary biology
tags as “major transitions of life” (see Maynard Smith & Szathmary, 1995), looks
more like wishful thinking than evidence when carried over to human-groups-as-
organism concept. It is not hard to argue that there is no reason to think that the
exceptional transition occurred just because the organism lives in groups. Especially
when there are a vast number of counterexamples (therefore the adjective
“exceptional”) which do (did) not lead to the transition. Second, when considering
human groups, the analogy is again imprecise. While these theories allow for the fact
that an assessed “produced” organism (eukaryotic cell) is an organism in the more
restricted sense, i.e. is an adaptive unit in respect to many traits, the same is still
untrue about human social groups.
This supportive analogy is part of a broader argument trying to justify the
possibility of using functionalist thinking at a higher level than that of genes
themselves. Its classic example is the procedure in which it appears that we use
functionalist thinking on the level of individual organisms as a standard, even
though, from the gene’s point of view it means omitting its individual interests. If we
are, for example, interested in the size and shape of a particular organ, we ask what
function it has for a single organism (animal), not for a single gene and we want to
know what environmental selective pressures and played their role in its shaping,
and why. This explanatory procedure provides satisfactory results, i.e., it delivers
valid answers to our question about the size and shape of the organ. So, the
argument goes, we can proceed in the same way at the group level, because the
conflict between the interests of individual genes within the single organism
(intragenomic conflict) is equivalent to a conflict between the interests of individuals
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within a group.97 Then why can we not use this functionalist thinking at higher levels
(i.e., human groups)?
But this kind of thinking was the cause of the crisis that an earlier evolutionary
biology found itself in and that the “gene-view revolution” led it out of. Part of the
solution was a greater focus on the distinction between replicators and vehicles (for
more see “replicators and vehicles/interactors distinction” below). Also the gene-
individual/individual-group analogy is not as accurate as proponents of group
selection would have wished for, because, as I have mentioned before, the fate of
individuals and genes is tied together in a much stronger fashion than is the fate of
individuals and groups (see “shared exit route,” “instability of groups” etc.).
Moreover, as M. E. Price points out (see 2012), intragenomic conflict is very rare,
while within group conflict is the norm.
The next big problem related to the definition of groups by means other than
a standard definition of organism is the one connected to J. Tooby’s “Heterarchic
Pathway Feedback Theory” (see 2012), where he criticizes multilevel selection theory
already on the biological level. He thus turns the standard way of criticising which
usually focuses on the demonstration of errors that occur when somebody tries to
97It should be noted that the term “interest” might possibly be a source of a number of confusions.
And primarily I do not even mean the dimension in which only individuals may have interests,
because they alone are gifted with intentionality genes and groups lack. The confusion I emphasize
here comes even if we continue with a purely biological understanding of the term interest. In this
understanding, an interest has to do with anything that actively interacts with its environment and
thus expresses its preference for (tendency to) specific objectives. A single-celled organism or gene has
such interest. So what kind of confusion do I have in mind? The moment we begin to switch between
levels (gene, individual, group) without recognizing one of them as basic (primary/dominant), we
switch between interests of these units without having a rule that would guide us in deciding which is
in the services of which. If the interests are in this view equivalent then it might happen that they
might also be contradictory with no way of how to see some of them as proximate mechanisms in the
service of ultimate goals (such as it is elegantly done by the “gene-view revolution”). It is at this point
the supportive analogy used by group selection/multiple selection becomes confusing, because it does
not hold a unifying perspective of the interests of the lowest level (i.e., gene’s) as primary thus
confining/conditioning the interests of the two remaining units (individual, group). If we leave the
dominant perspective which begins with the interests of genes that shape the interests of individuals
that shape the interests of groups, we lose one essential thing. That is, a justification of why genes
would even bother to form individuals and why would individuals form groups if not to enforce (or
enhance their ability/opportunity to achieve) their own interests.
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biologize the socio-cultural domain. He claims that multilevel selection theory suffers
from errors of reverse procedure, when we try to impose on the biological world the
kind of hierarchical classification (“nested class inclusion”) that is not inherent to it.
On the contrary, structures in which the biological domain operates appear to be
very different and what is worse they interfere with (contradict) such an imposed
order of things. Natural selection operates on the basis of positive feedback causal
pathways between the effects of genes and their subsequent frequencies. Those genes
that succeed will be favoured by selection. The problem is that, as J. Tooby (2012)
asserts: “These pathways need not be, and often will not be aligned, mutually
consistent, or representable as operating at different levels in a hierarchy, but instead
will often be cross-cutting and heterarchical.” Even on the intragenomic level,
different genomes have different fitness interests and therefore press for different
adaptations sometimes disrupting one another (see Cosmides & Tooby, 1981).
The problem of group demarcation (hence the definition of an organism) is
inextricably linked to the problem of determining what actually constitutes the
fitness of a group and how we are able to access it. Fitness of every organism needs
to be considered as relative and localized. Relativity in this context means that it is
neither possible nor necessary to determine absolute values but rather to compare it
with the fitness of other relevant organisms. Fitness is, therefore, a matter of
relatedness and benchmarking. The question is not whether the organism managed
to survive and reproduce in the best possible manner but whether it survived and
reproduced better than relevant alternative types of organisms. 98 Perhaps the biggest
controversy in this process lies in fitness averaging as used by the standard
individual-gene selection theories, specifically, an averaging of individual fitness
across all groups.
Standard individual-gene selection theory measures fitness in relation to the
entire population (resulting in self vs. others fitness), while group selection theory in
98As with the famous saying: “to survive, you don’t need to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun
your friend.”
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relation to the group (resulting in a differentiation of within-group and between-
group fitness). The moment we use averaging when defining fitness, as do
individual-gene selection theories, we ignore the differences that exist in the fitness
of the population between various groups and we blur the information that is most
important for the group selection theory. Actually, by very definition, we erase an
area in which group selection theory could prove its competence. Not to use
averaging is therefore crucial for group selection theories because this practise blurs
the differences they use to determine the possible superior strength of between-
group selective pressures. D. S. Wilson and E. Sober therefore put much weight on
a criticism of this principle and they try to promote the term “averaging fallacy.”
But to average fitness in the definitional framework is the norm in all major
theories working within the within the framework of the main neo-Darwinian
hypothesis, such as is the Inclusive Fitness Theory (see Hamilton, 1963; 1964; 1975),
the Evolutionary Game Theory (Maynard Smith, 1982; Dugatkin, 1997; Skyrms, 1996)
or the Selfish Gene Theory (Williams, 1966; Dawkins, 1976). Proponents of averaging
argue that avoiding it can lead us to fundamental errors, as it did, according to them,
in the case of the concept of weak altruism (D. S. Wilson, 1975). Altruism redefined in
this way, in their opinion: “leads to the confusing situation where a trait could be
favoured because it selfishly increases an individual’s direct fitness, but will be
weakly altruistic by Wilson’s definition” (West et al., 2007: 420).99 For a deeper critical
99It is important to realize that if we asses an individual’s fitness relative to the individuals that it
interacts with in its group and not to the individuals of the whole population (breeding population),
and if we accept D. S. Wilson’s definition that behaviour which leads to reduced fitness of the
individual, in comparison to the fitness of other individuals of the group, is “weakly altruistic,” it
creates possible instances of behaviour by which the actor increases the fitness of all group members,
including their own, which, however, in comparison to other group members, increased less due to
actor’s costs (as with e.g., production of a public good). For other semantic confusions generated by
the group selection literature see Grafen (1984), who shows how different types of group selection can
be mixed up. Grafen (2006) focuses especially on the fallacy that sees new group selection as broader
than inclusive fitness or kin selection and in this respect more suitable for explanation of some
empirical cases. Similarly West et al., (2007: 425) state that: “there is no biological model or empirical
example that can be explained with the new group selection approach, that cannot also be understood
in terms of kin selection and inclusive fitness.” And Wade (1985) identifies the problem of how
numerous can be potential meanings of “group selection” when it is based only on partitioning of
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evaluation of disputes about the correct procedure (calculation/analysis) between the
two approaches, it is therefore necessary to keep in mind that you cannot just
compare the “equations” of both and say which of them reached the correct result,
but that there is also a difference due to the different default definitions.
It remains an open question which of the definitional frameworks might be
more accurate and more useful for grasping the issue of whether religious groups are
adaptive or not. What arguments allow evolutionary biologists to blur these
differences by definition when calculating individual fitness at the level of genetic
evolution? And should a majority consensus at this level, namely the fact that most
prominent evolutionary biologists find these arguments convincing, play any role?
Or is it important to maintain the differences in the data because of our intentions
and not to lose them by averaging? The main argument for averaging (see Grafen,
2006) is that how well a gene will spread is dependent on how well its fitness is
doing in comparison to the fitness values of all the other genes within the whole
reproducing population and not just in comparison to those with whom it finds itself
interacting with at the moment (group). In other words, natural selection selects for
the gene that increases its replication frequency in the whole population and not just
in some arbitrarily designated group/subset (see West et al., 2007: 421-422).
I will conclude my critical analysis of group selection accounts with an
objection which will bring us back to the general level of assessment on which
I began. What I have in mind is the uncritical dragging over of functionalist thinking.
It is surprising to how inaccurate and naive analogies D. S. Wilson can resort to when
he works with religion. As an illustration I use this example which shows the
signature of functionalist fallacy (2002: 31-32):
“Confront many human groups with the same novel problem and they will come up with
different solutions, some much better than others. If the groups are isolated from each
other, they may never converge on the best solution; evolution is not such a deterministic
selection into within-group and between-group components which can be done for any arbitrarily
defined group. Also see Reeve & Keller (1999), who pay special attention to reoccurrence of confusions
as new fields embrace relevant aspects of social evolution theory.
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process. If the groups are in contact, they might compare solutions and the worst might
quickly imitate the best. If convergence by imitation does not occur, then the worst might
simply succumb to the best in between-group interactions. Either way, the final outcome
is a degree of adaptation to the problem, without any genetic evolution taking place at
all. Evolution took place, but not at the genetic level.”
In addition to D. S. Wilson’s enigmatic circling around the phrase cultural evolution,
troubles of which I have pointed out earlier, he treats cultural variation as if it were
a kind of technological solution in which it is at least hypothetically possible to
determine the degree to which it is good or bad. However, if we want to relate
a similar principle of Wilson’s assessment to religious beliefs or ritual practices, we
soon discover how illusory the previously seemingly solid grounding of the
evaluative terms like worst or best is. On what basis will we judge the functionality
of two religious ideas? Who and on what grounds will evaluate which of the two
rituals is better? All that is left is to wait for the outcome of real rivalry but it will
always be dependent on so many other factors that common cause-and-effect
explanations of this process will not be aided by bringing in the neo-Darwinian
theory of evolution by natural selection. It adds nothing illuminating to them.
My conclusion from the whole of the foregoing analysis is that group selection
accounts, in an attempt to explain socio-cultural phenomenon such as religion, fail to
meet the fundamental principles of the neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection
and thus do not reach the criteria of its legitimate extensions. Except as a misleading
analogy and poor metaphor it adds nothing to existing historical accounts of cultural
change which operate at the level of ordinary causal explanations.
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ii) Dual Inheritance Accounts
The Dual Inheritance Theory of P. J. Richerson a R. Boyd is another reviewed theory
that employs the genuine process of cultural evolution and is strongly represented in
the current CSR. In my typology, Dual Inheritance Theory is a prime example of the
combination of the concepts of evolution through culture and the evolution of culture.100
In the first case, it models how cultural pressures are capable of selecting some
genetic mutations (for example, lactose digestion beyond infancy) thus focusing on
the issue of how strongly culture can influence our gene pool.
How does the reasoning of this part of the theory look like in a nutshell? Some
cultural “gains” especially those technological in nature, may be so pronounced and
their “contribution” sufficiently stable within a given population for a sufficiently
long period of time (measured by the number of generations), to be able to contribute
to the transformation of the human genome. Only few cases were so far developed in
bigger detail. The most frequently mentioned is the ability to digest milk and dairy
products in adulthood which was in some populations made possible by the long
cultural tradition of domestication and subsequent incorporation of milk in the diet
(dairying).101 The ability to acquire nutrients in this way may have increased the
probability of survival in specific environmental conditions and thus led to the
spread of a given genetic mutation in a population. This idea was originally called in
100 The conceptual division between evolution through culture and the evolution of culture is introduced to
capture the difference between the two types of evolutionary accounts we currently run into, and for
which, with no other distinction, have used the same term of cultural evolution. The essential difference
between the two accounts is whether or not they really employ the genuine autonomous process of
evolution of culture or not. If it does not, the account is evolutionary because its basic paradigm takes
into account the feedback effects of culture on the gene. However, this evolution through culture account
does not claim that the process of cultural change should be subject to Darwinian principles. It
therefore allows for the influence of culture on the biological evolution of our species, and
furthermore, it makes it central to its interest. However, this account does not claim that in the
explication of cultural development itself we should be able to successfully apply evolutionary
principles (such as natural selection).
101 No other mammal is able to digest milk in adulthood of its own kind, let alone the milk of another
species.
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1970s the “Simoons Hypothesis,”102 and at the time was considered controversial.
Later, however, thanks to genetic research, it was demonstrated that adult lactose
digestion is controlled by a single dominant gene. Moreover, population statistics
subsequently supported the view that a history of dairying is the best predictor of
this gene’s spread in given populations (see Holden & Mace, 1997; Cavalli-Sforza,
Menozzi, & Piazza, 1994).
This example effectively illustrates what kind of arguments evolution through
culture uses. For dairying to make its impact at the level of genetically transmitted
information (the spread of the dominant gene allowing adult lactose digestion in
a given population) required only three hundred generations (an exceptionally short
period of time in evolutionary terms). The ability to create complex cultural
adaptations emerges in human evolution, according to P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd
(see 2005: 193-194), approximately twenty thousand generations ago, thus creating
a period long enough for this kind of interesting selective pressures to operate on
human gene pools.103
A similar kind of argument was presented by evolutionary anthropologist
R. Wrangham in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Wrangham’s
theory (2009) claims that the ability to cook food (through any kind of heat
processing) led to a reduction in the time and energy demands in digestion of such
food. That in turn led to a substantial reduction in the size of human guts and, in
combination with other factors such as the possibility to utilize a larger amount of
protein, also led to an increase in brain size. Similar examples of physiological
102Named after geographer F, Simoons who developed it.

103 This approach allows us to produce all kinds of predictions. An illustrative example may be
a speculation about a “dyslectic gene,” which should be, according to D. L. Everett (2012), gradually
eliminated in literate societies. If dyslexia harms an individual’s ability to read or write, and if these
abilities are essential for a livelihood in a given society (employment/status), it should also damage
individual’s ability to successfully reproduce. However, without the connection to a specific gene
track, such speculations suffer from a number of problems. The most significant ones stem from the
complexity of reproductive success in such populations. Individuals have opportunities to
compensate for their handicap in many other areas which all need to be accounted for when we want
to build up a comprehensive formula of what influences the degree of reproductive success in human
literate societies.
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impacts can be associated with long-term use of certain objects, such as throwing
weapons which led to the realignment of muscle stratification in the upper torso or to
changes in the morphology of the palm and shoulder.
Some authors go further and say that it need not be only technologies that
have an impact on the genome but, in principle, any cultural forms. I have already
introduced the Guarded Egalitarianism Hypothesis by C. Boehm (for more
information see chapter “Group Selection Accounts”). Similarly, H. Gintis in his
Moral Sense Hypothesis claims that conformity to cultural/social norms was also
likely to increase biological fitness. Non-compliance/violation/exceedance of
cultural/social norms was met with banishment/ostracism. This, in turn, was related
(at least in hunter-gatherer societies) with increased difficulty in access to resources
(food as well as reproduction), and, in extreme cases, exile, therefore threatening
survival. If there is a genetic predisposition for conformity, something like an
altruism gene, it would be selected for by sexual selection (or other kinds of social
selection), and the free-rider gene (the genetic predisposition to violate social norms)
should be gradually eradicated.
C. Boehm’s, S. Bowles’, H. Gintis’, and R. Boyd and P. J. Richerson’s theories
are in the end all instances of gene-culture coevolution. But their scenarios differ in
details and care must be taken to ensure we do not blur these differences. One of the
main differences is the extent to which they work with the concept of evolution of
culture. Another difference lies in what kind of selection they see as fundamental for
their models - whether kin selection, direct reciprocity or indirect reciprocity
(selection by reputation). Yet another difference is whether their model requires
group selection or not, which connects to the differences in how they argue for
increase in group selection effectiveness. I also have to mention that although this
text about various representatives of gene-culture coevolution finds itself in a chapter
“Dual Inheritance Accounts,” Dual Inheritance Theory is just one of the
representatives of theories of gene-culture coevolution. It is a narrower concept and
trademark of the authors R. Boyd and P. J. Richerson.

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To increase the contrast of the difference between: (A) the EWCE approach
(elaborated on in a separate chapter) which is not against the concept of evolution
through culture in principle, but which refuses to recognize that there is an
autonomous process of cultural evolution (in the sense of the concept of the evolution
of culture), and (B) approaches which utilize cultural evolution (in the sense of the
concept of the evolution of culture), one might focus on what each tradition of research
puts a greater emphasis on. While the EWCE approach emphasizes the
limitations/constrains of any cultural “superstructure” by the genetic “base” (to use
Marx’s terminology), the evolution of culture approach stresses the autonomy and
power of cultural “superstructure.” This dual emphasis can be nicely illustrated by
the metaphor used by P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd (2005: 194), when they
paraphrased C. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson’s statement, that “genes have culture on
a leash” (1981: 303)104 and expand it to: “Culture is on a leash, all right, but the dog on
the end is big, smart, and independent. On any given walk, it is hard to tell who is
leading who.”
The name of the theory (Dual Inheritance) refers to another of the fundamental
principles that this theory develops. As I have mentioned, its authors work with the
concept of the interconnectedness of processes of biological as well as cultural
evolution. Although the two processes are inextricably intertwined and influence
each other, the method of replication is different for each. Genes need a special kind
of information to be able to create their own exact copies in the next generation and
genetic evolution functions thanks to this information being stored in/written to
DNA. Cultural evolution operates with another type of inheritance and cultural
104C. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson (1981) should in this context in no way be considered characteristic
representatives of EWCE approach. I use their phrase for the quotation purposes only as it is
a convenient example of the first emphasis. However, this book is one of the pioneering works of
gene-culture coevolution models.
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information is transmitted to the next generation by learning. The information is then
encoded in language, cultural artefacts, etc.105
Dual Inheritance Theory is not a theory which would work with cultural
evolution in the same way as the concept of evolution through culture. On the contrary,
it is a model stepping far beyond theses boundaries, which also uses the genuine
evolution of culture that, as we have seen, combines with biological/genetic
evolution.106 What do the main features of cultural evolution look like in this theory?
First of all, Dual Inheritance Theory openly works with a non-random origin and
inheritance of variants. Cultural variants (mutations) need not arise blindly with
respect to fitness. On the contrary, they can arise due to entirely intentional effort
that leads to the creation of a new invention or to an achievement of a new kind of
solution to some kind of problem. Subsequently, this new invention or achievement
can then be just as intentionally handed over/transferred to someone else in a process
of generational social learning.
According to the authors of Dual Inheritance Theory, this non-randomness
does not obstruct the natural selection, as that, in their opinion, works with any
pattern of heritable variation. But as they argue further, intentionally produced
variants are, overall, rare and cannot replace the prevalent, learned, inherited
variants. This conviction is in P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd’s works reflected in their
understanding of how the process of religious innovation works (2005: 53-54):
“Religious innovations are a lot like mutations, and successful religions are adapted
in sophisticated ways beyond the ken of individual innovators. The small frequency
of successful innovations suggests that most innovations degrade the adaptation of
a religious tradition, and only a lucky few improve it.”
105 The cultural diversity of groups (phenotypic variation) is not compromised genetically because it
has its own reasons and mechanisms why and how to maintain the differences in spite of migration
and mixed marriages.
106 This is visible even in the freshest writings of R. Boyd and P. J. Richerson – the founders and
leading proponents of this theory – called The Origin and Evolution of Cultures.
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This last point is essential for the theory and it also shows the inconsistency of
the original claim, which I feel need to emphasize, and which I will try to explain
with the help of the following quotation. P. J. Richerson says (2012): “In human
culture, non-random variation and natural selection can both play roles in the
evolution of cultural variation so long as the effects of non-random variation are not
so strong as to overwhelm the transmitted aspect of culture.” Here, the author
suddenly puts the non-random variation and natural selection in counteraction, as if
they were antagonistic in the same way as I understand them by my definition. My
criticism concerns the fact that the Dual Inheritance Theory first defines natural
selection more broadly and openly proclaims that the non-randomness in the
principle of inheritance does not obstruct it in any way. However, as the quote
shows, the theory does not uphold this rule and non-random variation is
incorporated only feignedly. In order to apply the natural selection of cultural forms
it needs to push the influence of non-random variation to an insignificant position.
This, however, just shows that non-random variation is not an integral part of natural
selection, nor a part of the theory of evolution based on natural selection, on the
contrary, it is an impassable obstacle for such a theory.
Advocates of Dual Inheritance Theory must, therefore, constantly strive for
mutually relating the two different types of selection: intentional selection (non-
random variation/deliberate inventions) and natural selection. Simply put, the model
of complementarity of non-random innovation and natural selection could be
understood, in this theory of cultural evolution, as a symbiosis, in which the first
process helps to speed up the latter, rather slow, process. Human cultural creations
are, in a short time, laid on the table by innovative spirits and then seized by natural
selection moving at glacial speed. Thus, the human species is gifted with a special
ability to build on its inheritance, adding to it “something else,” and through the
non-random creations, selective innovations, cultural diffusion and intentional
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selection of popular cultural variants,107 accelerate the process of its cultural
evolutionary adaptations which would be reached by natural selection only very
slowly.
In a more detailed analysis, we learn that the duality in Dual Inheritance
Theory can refer to not one, but two things. The first, and more fundamental of these
dualities affects the level of human evolution in general, where it refers to a distinction
between two basic types of evolutionary processes: genetic and cultural, which differ
in their method of the transmission of information (inheritance). The second duality
is reflected on a more specific level of cultural evolution itself, where it refers to
a separation of two kinds of selection interacting in the process of cultural change.
These selections are the non-random invention and the natural selection of cultural
variations.108 It is precisely this combination in which lies the specific contribution of
Dual Inheritance Theory that formally sees itself as a theory of cultural evolution and
understands itself as a Darwinian (i.e., built on Darwinian principles) theory of
history.
And what exactly are the basic features of the process of cultural evolution in
Dual Inheritance Theory? Its cumulative evolutionary process is very rapid in
comparison to genetic evolution,109 and culture usually evolves by the accumulation
of small variations. This element might seem like an axiomatic standard, but it need
not be always the case. In biology, there is a significant line of argument claiming
that new adaptations occur mostly in big jumps. Among proponents of this idea we
107 If the intentional selection of popular cultural variants is determined by cultural embeddedness and
this embeddedness evolved by natural selection, it will operate in the same direction as natural
selection.
108 To illustrate the second duality I will use quotes from the text of P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd (2005:
51), who specifically say: “[…] the decisions, choices, and preferences of individuals act at the
population level as forces that shape cultural evolution, along with other processes like natural
selection.” Or: “[…] several distinct processes rooted in human decision making lead to the
accumulation of beneficial cultural variations, each with a distinctive twist of its own and none exactly
like natural selection.”
109 This is so despite the fact that P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd are, within the hypothetical spectrum of
advocates of “how slow” or “how rapid” the genetic evolution is, among those who try to search for
examples of its possible rapidness (see 2005: 42-43).
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could find for example “Darwin’s bulldog” T. H. Huxley or more recently S. J.
Gould, who were both in favour of the view that evolution by and large works in the
way that once in a while there arises a distinctive mutation110 which is either accepted
or rejected by natural selection. The stress that proponents of the Dual Inheritance
Theory put on the accumulation of small variations as being fundamental to the
process of cultural change is understandable. For if cultural evolution moved in large
jumps which would be, in addition, non-random mutations/intentional inventions
created by “cultural inventors” (wilful monsters), the only contribution of Dual
Inheritance Theory would be to shunt the domain of explaining why some cultural
inventions got accepted and spread, while others were rejected and were doomed to
failure and extinction. That would again fall within the normal type of cause-and-
effect explanations used in traditional historical explanatory frameworks which can
do without the add-on value of the theory of natural selection, and that is something
its authors do not want to settle for.
The theory of P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd along with J. Henrich’s model uses
a similar concept of group selection as D. S. Wilson. However, Richerson, Boyd and
Henrich commendably supplement their theory with a clarifying cultural component,
and use the term cultural group selection in their writings. Thus the authors make
explicit an important distinction between cultural group selection and
genetic/biological group selection, which remains only implicitly present in the works
of many others. They argue that humans are in fact equipped by innate selflessly/self-
sacrificing altruistic psychological traits (selfless altruism) as opposed to just innate
selfishly altruistic psychological traits (selfish altruism), as evidenced by the
uniqueness of psychopathy. However, as I stated earlier, this example would be
a sufficient objection if and only if the standard individual-gene selection would
predict that the majority of the population ought to be psychopath-like or could not
explain why it is not. Yet neither of these problems affect the standard individual-
110 These significant mutations were coined “hopeful monsters” (see Gould, 1977).
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gene selection theory. This is because this theory predicts that to be genuinely
altruistic is the best possible evolutionary strategy - not only based on selfless
sacrifice for the group, but also based on individual selfish interests (see chapter
“Group Selection Accounts”).
Standard evolutionary theories of human cooperation (i.e., those that do not,
and do not need to, incorporate group selection) work through what I call selfish
altruism. That is, either through direct or indirect fitness benefits brought to
cooperating individuals as per Axelrod and Hamilton (1981); or through reciprocal
altruism (direct fitness benefits in Hamilton’s terminology) as per Trivers (1971). It
has been argued in the last two decades - mainly by developers of one of the most
comprehensive and influential cultural group selection approaches to human
cooperation, which is now called the Beliefs, Preferences, and Constraints model (Boyd
& Richerson, 2006; Fehr & Henrich, 2003; Gintis et al., 2003; also C. Boehm should be
mentioned among the developers of the model) - that these standard approaches face
several problems. Among these are mainly: (1) why humans cooperate in anonymous
contexts when their reputation is not at stake, (2) why humans engage in the costly
punishment of others, or (3) why humans help others spontaneously – even when
they have not been helped previously. Yet some have shown that these standard
approaches can comfortably accommodate all of these apparent issues (for the
extended argument with special respect to the importance of the Partner choice
mechanism see Baumard et al., 2013).
Let me elaborate on the distinction between selfless and selfish altruism a little
further to make clearer what I am stating and to show that it is a real problem and
not just a “minor quibble.” The difference of whether we are endowed by innate
selflessly/self-sacrificing altruistic psychological traits rather than by innate selfishly
altruistic psychological traits, refers to the biological dimension of altruism not
altruism as per its psychological definition (for more see chapter “Group Selection
Accounts”). These are biologically inheritable traits, and this is not altered by the fact
that they are at the same time psychological in their nature. Selfless and selfish
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altruism are not references indicating authenticity or falsity of unselfish
psychological motivations, because these are similarly true for both types of traits.
This is the case even though these traits can later be connected to additional specific
differences in behavioural responses. They are references to propensities to act
which, in my definition, either: (a) benefits the recipient but is costly to the actor (+/-),
or (b) benefits the recipient as well as the actor (+/+). Costs and benefits are here
defined on the basis of the inclusive fitness consequences of a behaviour; inclusive
fitness being the sum of direct and indirect fitness, measured as an impact of
a behaviour on the production of offspring and on the production of offspring of
related individuals respectively (for inclusive fitness and direct and indirect fitness
see West et al., 2007).
The reason why it might seem at first glance that it is but a “minor quibble,” is
due to the fact that we are trying to explain the same end result (the state of the
world), i.e., altruistic behaviour. At the very same time, it might also seem that both
ways explain it with the same conclusion, and just as well. However, a closer look
shows that this is not the case. If we think both explanations through, we will find
that the predicted end results begin to differ in details (although both will continue
to share true selfless psychological motivations). It will also show that one of the
ways actually predicts an end result that we would struggle to find in reality.
In a nutshell, the aim is to explain “something out there” – a certain type of
behaviour that we designate as altruistic. At the same time, we have two ways of
accessing it: individual-gene selection and group selection, and we are trying to
evaluate their usefulness. The difference between both types of traits is only
a theoretical auxiliary intermediate step (a scientific hypothetical tool) of how to
successfully reach that evaluation. The reason is that, when we imagine the
differences between these selective pressures, we find out that it should necessarily
lead to the development of different proclivities which shape the subsequent
behaviour in question. Different proclivities then predict different resulting
behaviours (different patterns of altruistic behaviour). The question is, which one of
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them better reflects the image of “that which is out there” that we originally tried to
explain. Does our altruism look more like an effort to maximize the total welfare of
our group at any cost (selfless/self-sacrificing – indiscriminately valuing the good of
even non-related in-groups); or rather, as an effort to maximize the fair outcome of
all involved, because no one can accept an outcome in which they gain less than what
they could gain with other partners (selfish – reciprocal, reputational or kin-
discriminating)? (For further arguments, see chapter “Evolutionary Study of Culture
without Cultural Evolution.”)
To label the differences between these traits, one could choose other terms
expressing the same idea, e.g., one-way beneficial altruism vs. mutually beneficial
altruism, or altruistic cooperation vs. mutually beneficial cooperation. Yet the latter
would introduce, as a broader category, another important term: cooperation. Even
though it would be in accord with some usage in the literature (see West et al., 2007:
418), it would move altruism to occupy a much narrower meaning. It would
therefore create contradictio in adjecto in some highly influential widely used terms
like reciprocal altruism (Trivers, 1971) or weak altruism (E. O. Wilson, 1975; used widely
in the group selection literature), where it is commonly seen as being part of
mutually beneficial ways of cooperation working through direct benefits. In this way,
altruism would be moved in its meaning to work through indirect benefits only.
Simpler distinctions like altruism vs. cooperation, altruism vs. selfishness or
altruism vs. mutualism suffer from the same problems. Moreover, in the first case,
cooperation might imply more than a single behaviour, and in the last case
mutualism in biological and ecological literature denotes a more specific instance of
cooperation between species (see Wilson, 1975 or West et al., 2007: 416) which some
authors do not respect (for example Baumard et al., 2013). Therefore, I avoid these
simpler distinctions and only add the adjectives selfless or selfish to altruism in order
to increase specificity, thus keeping my definition of altruism in agreement with
most of the approaches from both the empirical (see Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003) as
well as the theoretical (see Boyd et al., 2003) sides of the literature on altruism in
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humans that allow the inclusion of both recipient/actor (+/-) payoff and
recipient/actor (+/+) payoff types of behaviours.
Promoters of Dual Inheritance Accounts, similarly to D. S. Wilson’s position,
argue that group selection is possible when we deal with higher-level adaptations
(where there must exist competition between a greater number of comparable cases)
that at the same time do not create greater conflict among the interests of lower levels
(genes or individuals). Unlike D. S. Wilson, they use the word cultural to emphasize
that it is a suitable framework for explaining behaviour unique for human species
whereas for the vast majority of social behaviours of other mammals it is sufficient to
use the standard inclusive fitness framework. However, in human between-group
competition, culture plays an essential role. In groups where there exists the co-
evolution of genes carrying prosocial psychological traits and of prosocial cultural
innovations that multiply their effects (for example, highly arousing rituals with
ingroup-prosociality/outgroup-hostility boosting effects), these groups will most
likely outcompete groups that lack such amplifying cultural technologies.
A summary of the hypothesis that P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd develop within
the framework of the Dual Inheritance Theory is nicely captured in its title – the
Tribal Social Instincts Hypothesis (also referred to as the Within-Tribe Instincts
Hypothesis). At its core lies the idea that we have predispositions towards: (a) the
enforcement of rules of fairness, (b) guarded altruism to non-relatives, (c) conformity
to social institutions, (d) enough trust to permit division of labour, and (e) limited
tolerance for leadership. Its further development and actual impact on Religious
Studies are both addressed in the next section.
Dual Inheritance Accounts in Religious Studies

The main feature (more of a trademark) of Dual Inheritance Theory in Religious
Studies is that genuine cultural evolution means shifting the solution of the issue of
whether religion is an adaptation or not to another level, that is, to the level of rapid
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cultural evolution, where this issue becomes especially difficult to decide. Its authors
are then able to take as a starting point the view that many religious elements are
based on the use of genetic psychological adaptations evolved in non-religious
contexts, but conclude that cultural evolution (specifically cultural group selection)
subsequently managed to transform/turn these by-products into an adaptation for
collective action111 (see Richerson & Boyd, 1999; Boyd & Richerson, 2002; Richerson
& Boyd, 2005;112 Henrich & Henrich, 2007). Thus the answer to the (at first glance
simple) question about whether the basis of religious behaviour originated as an
evolutionary adaptation or as a by-product of adaptations, which is already difficult
enough for “insiders,”113 becomes considerably more complicated by adding an extra
dimension of another evolutionary process. The fact that it is difficult (and how
difficult) to find the answer on this level for the authors of the theory themselves is
well illustrated by the title of the paper delivered by P. J. Richerson and L. Newson
on the International Conference on the Evolution of Religion: “Is Religion Adaptive? Yes,
No, Neutral, but Mostly, We Don’t Know”(2008: 73).114
111 This view makes it in Gould’s terminology a “secondary adaptation,” which is defined as exapted
(co-opted) trait(s) that is(are) modified when taking on its(their) new role (see Gould & Vrba, 1982). In
our case this means that while the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that produce religious beliefs
and behaviours did not evolve for this purpose and they might have been, on their own, by-products
of adaptations evolved for other purposes, these cognitive, emotional, and behavioural elements were
exapted for use in a complex system of communication, cooperation, and coordination we call
religious system. And furthermore these cognitive and emotional mechanisms have been, in this
exaptation process, adaptively modified (their structural design has been changed) by the new socio-
ecological niche created by religion.
112 P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd (2005) explicitly argue that the co-opting of pre-existent structures for
novel solutions to ecological challenges is a hallmark of evolutionary adaptation.

113 If it is an adaptation is it an individual adaptation or a group adaptation, is it primary or
secondary? If it is in fact a by-product, is it a by-product with functional effects (and if it is an

exaptation, is it a preadaptation or a spandrel?) or without functional effects (in which case is it
neutral or detrimental for biological fitness?)? To make things clearer: By-products that have
functional effects, i.e., they have enhancing fitness effects in their new role, are called exaptations
(earlier also cooptations). Exaptations must not be modified when taking on their new role otherwise
they become secondary adaptations. Exaptations are either preadaptations (adaptations coopted for
another functional effect, like birds’ feathers having evolved for insulation and which were only later
coopted for flight), or spandrels (nonadaptations coopted for functional effect).
114 The article seeks to draw our attention to how complex a problem such a question poses and tries to
solve and that before it will be possible (if ever) to reach any kind of conclusion in the form of a simple
generalization in either direction, it will be necessary to still go through an enormous amount of work,
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One of the characteristics of representatives of gene-culture coevolution, who
work with multi-level selection, and whose influence on Religious Studies is
strongest, includes essentially also the elaboration of mathematical models of cultural
evolution. In addition to the above mentioned P. J. Richerson, R. Boyd, J. Heinrich
and S. Bowles this is also true in the case of P. Turchin. J. Henrich is closely
associated (and often also co-publishes) with both P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd, the
latter also being his doctoral advisor (see Henrich & Boyd, 1998; Henrich & Boyd,
2002; Henrich et al., 2008; Richerson et al., 2010; Boyd et al., 2011). He advocates the
benefits of formal mathematical models of cultural evolution primarily on the basis
of their ability to help us create otherwise counterintuitive predictions, more precise
verbal theorizing and to generate new insights. And with them to bring along also
new empirical research programmes in many fields ranging from genetics,
evolutionary biology, anthropology and palaeoanthropology, through primatology
and psychology, to archaeology and Religious Studies (see Henrich, 2001; Henrich
& Boyd, 2002; Henrich et al., 2006; Henrich & Henrich, 2007; Henrich et al., 2010;
Henrich, 2012).115
Incorporation of group selection into formal mathematical models of gene-
culture coevolution is also one of the topics of S. Bowles, who specializes in
simulating conditions under which social norms may lead, during a contest between
groups, to the expansion of altruism (see Bowles, 2006).116 P. Turchin focuses his
that has only just started. On this account and for this purpose only it does not make the distinction
between the terms adaptive and adaptation.
115 When considering mathematical models, it should be kept in mind that no matter how noble and
scientifically they sound as an auxiliary method, they will always be only as good as their
assumptions are plausible and as useful they turn out to be in solving real-life problems.
116 An example of the criticism of a mathematical model, that does not asses how mathematically
sound the model is, but if the set of conditions are sufficiently plausible to help us solve the real-life
problem, might be a following of Pinker’s evaluation of the model of evolution of altruism by
S. Bowles. Bowles’ model in a nutshell states: In human evolutionary history there was a substantial
time when competition (warfare) between groups had a high impact on the majority of members of
the group (or even all members) with respect both to winners (access to new resources) and to losers
(genocide). Victory or defeat depended on the amount/level of self-sacrifice of individuals of a given
group. Even for self-sacrificing individuals, although reducing at the moment their fitness in
comparison to selfish individuals of the same group, the benefits of the group’s victory outweighed
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interest on the development of a general theory of cultural evolution in which he
enriches the modelling of historical processes with the tools of ecology. His most
well-known writings are related to explanations (and also predictions) of the rise and
fall of empires (see Turchin, 2003; Turchin, 2005; Turchin, 2009; Turchin, 2010).
Dual Inheritance Theory comes to current Religious Studies mainly as a part of
so called the Big Gods Hypothesis, which connects the by-product position (standard
CSR model) with cultural group selection (cultural evolution perspective).117 This
hybrid position stands in opposition to individual selectionist-adaptationist
the costs of the defeat if the period of conflict between the groups is sufficiently long enough and if the
conflicts are substantial enough. For this reason, traits of sacrifice for the group evolved in humans,
and thus it is a transparent model of the evolution of altruism, including empathy and generosity.
Groups with many altruists will expand at the expense of groups with few or no altruists (see Bowles,
2006). S. Pinker criticizes this model as it is, according to him, based on a nonplausible assumption
which does not reflect the real state of affairs, specifically, the assumption that altruism, in all its
forms, leads to success in the inter-group military conflicts, or that it could be its primary cause.
However, according to Pinker, the innate psychological altruistic trait includes not only rushing
headlong into a battle, defending comrades with one’s own body or deliberately giving up of one’s
food rations, but includes also elements significantly counterproductive from the perspective of
military effectiveness such as compassion for the weak and needy. According to his opinion, in the
real world the results of similar conflicts are decided primarily by other causes such as the differences
in technology, ideology, military strategy and organization coerced by brutal discipline, none of which
needs be costly to the individuals who implement them. His sarcastic remarks about the model are
right on target (Pinker, 2012): “Thus we have an explanation of why the world is divided into the
empires of the Amish and the !Kung, whose barn-raising and food-sharing allowed them to
overpower rival groups weakened by internal selfishness. By the same token the model explains why
those selfish groups, with their harem-holding despots, ruthless warlords, conscript armies, and
exploited slaves and serfs have been so rare and short-lived in human history. It readily explains why
warrior societies are distinguished by their charity, compassion toward the weak, and equality of
women.” The similar point that political history might supply us with much more parsimonious
explanations of what might at times lead to large-scale non-kin cooperation is also accentuated by
L. H. Martin (2008: 350): “one small-scale society may find it expedient to cooperate with another in
competition with a third for, for example, resources insufficient to support all parties. Typically, these
negotiations were concluded by strategies, such as an intermarriage, that allowed all members of the
new alliance to be represented as trusted kin.”
117 The hypothesis plays the leading part in the UBC project Cultural Evolution of Religion Research
Consortium (CERC), which aims to answer the question whether and how are religious beliefs and
behaviours evolutionarily linked to within-group solidarity and cooperation. The project is funded by
the grant “The Evolution of Religion and Morality” granted to the Centre for the Study of Human
Evolution, Cognition and Culture (HECC). On management and research committee we would find
authors like E. Slingerland, J. Henrich, A. Norenzayan or M. Collard (for more details see project’s
website: http://www.hecc.ubc.ca/cerc/).
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accounts118 and considers religion a result of by-products. Nonetheless, it continues
with the view that over the course of history some variants that arose via these
normal cognitive processes became more successful than others through cultural
group selection, thus treating religion as a secondary cultural adaptation. The Big
Gods Hypothesis tries specifically to access a critical role that the belief in morally
concerned gods may have played in the development of large-scale societies of
cooperators (see Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007; Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008; Shariff,
Norenzayan & Henrich, 2009; Shariff & Norenzayan, 2011; or Norenzayan, 2013; for
related yet distinct argument see also Whitehouse, 2004 and 2008119). Its authors
suggest that social monitoring, which is necessary for punishing freeriding,
uncooperative behaviours and cheating (without which societies collapse; see
Henrich, 2006), was at a certain point in history outsourced to the widespread belief
in morally concerned omniscient supernatural agents. This point in history occurred
gradually as societies expanded in size and anonymity made social monitoring more
difficult (reputational and reciprocity incentives become insufficient). Subsequent
experimental research (Shariff & Norenzayan, 2011) further elaborated on this
hypothesis and supported the idea that it is not belief in just any morally concerned
118 For example A. Norenzayan (2013), when accounting for costliness of religious behaviour (why
people do not fake beliefs for freeriding purposes) as well as for how are the beliefs and behaviours
able to spread through population (why Mickey Mouse is not worshipped), dismisses costly signalling
approaches as insufficient. Instead he uses Henrich’s (2009) concept of Credibility Enhancing Displays
(CREDs). CREDs are publicly displayed religious behaviours that function as reliable indicators of
beliefs, as inferences of sincerity of stated beliefs, as energizers of others, and can be transmitted
purely by cultural evolutionary processes (cultural learning biases). Absence of CREDs in relation to
some entities results in prohibition of commitment to those entities. In other words, people adopt only
those beliefs that are supported by cultural models.
119 H. Whitehouse holds an almost identical viewpoint (2008: 38): “According to the modes theory,
there are really just three ways of acquiring and transmitting religion.” Both “modes of religiosity”
(the imagistic as well as the doctrinal) are two “additional” ways that evolved consecutively out of the
first way which is “species-typical and more or less invariable, consisting of naturally ‘catchy’
concepts” (Whitehouse, 2008: 38). The first way corresponds with P. Boyer’s idea of MCI concepts as
by-products of evolution, sometimes (Whitehouse, 2004) referred to as “cognitively optimal beliefs”
(for more see chapter “Evolutionary Study of Culture without Cultural Evolution”). The imagistic
mode evolved as a group-level adaptation increasing the cohesiveness of coalitions (see chapter
“Group Selection Accounts”). And the doctrinal mode steps into the view of a cultural evolution of
religion itself as it “emerged when large-scale patterns of cooperation became routinized (Whitehouse,
2008: 39) and provided the means for a standardization of imagistic revelations into doctrines.
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omniscient supernatural agents but rather the belief in morally concerned omniscient
supernatural agents which are fearful and punishing (in contrast to benevolent), that
may have been especially effective for this end.120 Social groups with punishing big
gods outcompeted groups with other supernatural systems because they did not
promote cooperation as effectively.121
Critical Analysis of Dual Inheritance Accounts

Much of the critical analysis in this section has already been distributed to its
relevant parts, first when presenting the general points of the theory (e.g., the
distinction of selfish vs. selfless altruism; the non-random variation in relation to
natural selection etc.), later also when introducing specific applications of the theory
in the Study of Religions (e.g., mathematical modelling). Moreover, a large part of
my objections against the cultural group selection (as the Dual Inheritance Theory is
sometimes called), are also consistent with the objections I have raised against the
concept of group selection in general as already presented in the previous section.
Thus by mentioning them here again I would unnecessarily repeat myself. What
follows, therefore, are only a few additional critical remarks.
The term gene-culture coevolution122 (originally used by H. Gintis), which as
I noted before, is sometimes used synonymously with current theories of cultural
120 In this part, the Big Gods Hypothesis comes close to the related but distinct argument of the
Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis (more in chapter “Evolutionary Study of Culture without
Cultural Evolution”).
121 Connection of by-productivism with cultural evolution allows the proponents of Big Gods
Hypothesis to take the argument even further. A. Norenzayan, for example, tries to explain the rise of
atheists in recent human history and proposes that gods and governments (or secular moral
authorities in general) ultimately occupy the same slot and he provocatively suggests that strong
secular governments with reliable policing institutions render the big gods dispensable (2013: 172):
“some societies with strong institutions and material well-being may have passed a threshold, no
longer needing religion to sustain large-scale cooperation. In short: secular societies have climbed that
ladder of religion, and then kicked it away.”
122 The term coevolution is a terminus technicus introduced by biologists P. R. Ehrlich and P. H. Raven
(see 1964), who used it to refer to a system, in which two species share the environment to such an
extent that evolutionary change in one species induces evolutionary change also in the other species.
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evolution, is often used very vaguely and suffers from the same shortcomings as the
term cultural evolution (when not accompanied by further specifications). The term
captures well the close connection of theories of biological evolution with theories of
evolution leaving its borders, which is a typical feature of this framework. Yet
without further specification it is so broad that it can include, in the extremes,
competing positions of solutions to the same problem.
The “gene” part, for example, does not mean that all its representatives
necessarily advocate the standard neo-Darwinian individual-gene selection, though
it might seem so at first glance, and create, thereby, an opposition to group selection
accounts. And again, the “culture” part in conjunction with the “coevolution,” does
not in the same unpredictable spirit, conclude that it would necessarily always have
to include genuine cultural evolution (in the sense of a genuine evolution of culture).
Thus the framework can include, on one hand, evolutionary psychologists, who do
not step beyond standard individual-gene selection and are interested in how our
biological nature influences (parenthesizes/predetermines), through various traits of
our inherited psychology, our cultural nature, or also those evolutionary
anthropologists, who examine how culture can retroactively influence our genetic
evolution (in the sense of evolution through culture). On the other hand, there is also
room to fit certain sociobiological accounts (C. J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson),
superorganism group selection accounts (D. S. Wilson), dual inheritance accounts
(cultural group selectionists; see above) or memetic accounts (see next section).
Overall, it is a spectrum containing a rather wide range of positions between those
distinguishable (and already somewhat typified) positions.123
To repeat myself for the sake of greater clarity - one of the biggest problems
I find with Dual Inheritance Theory is how to distinguish the degree/extent of
influence of non-random variation in the system of cultural evolution, and the
123Other major gene-culture coevolution theories, fighting for their place in the spotlight of Religious
Studies falling within this spectrum, each having their own characteristics (and to which I cannot pay
closer attention due to the scope of the dissertation), include those by M. Donald (1991) or T. Deacon
(1997).
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related issue of distinguishing the influence of intentional selection from that of
natural selection. From my perspective, in which the definition of evolution is based
on natural selection, and where non-random variation/selection undermines, by
definition, natural selection, it is not possible to call processes involving non-random
variation/selection an evolution. But even if I would draw back from this definition
of evolution for the sake of the argument, and allow for the moment its widening and
acknowledged that there may exist also a view of evolution that combines both
processes and that both processes are somehow (to me mysteriously) successfully
kept distinct, (unlike P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd), I am convinced that in the cultural
domain, the influence of the non-random variation/selection is the dominant one.
In this view I agree with C. R. Darwin (1871), who saw the role of natural
selection in “civilized times” as marginal, and therefore as a poor model of cultural
change. The Dual Inheritance Theory argues the opposite. In this view, the influence
of non-random variations (deliberate inventions) within the cultural change is
marginal and it is natural selection which holds the helm of cultural change firmly in
hand. Such emphasis allows the authors to proverbially eat their cake (to squeeze
“evolution” in to explaining socio-cultural phenomena) and have it too (to lull those
who point to the existence and influence of the non-random variation/selection at the
level of the process of cultural change). However, in my view it weakens
(compromises) their broader definition of evolution, because it shows that in the end
it is again just and only natural selection, which they need to retain for “enriching”
explanations of cultural change by employing evolutionary theory. When explaining
the specific parameters that non-random variation/selection brings to the process, the
authors, albeit acknowledging that it is a process ultimately different from the
standard model of natural selection, do not show what “evolutionary theory” applies
to its unravelling. On the contrary, they continue to use only traditional explanatory
practices working with ordinary causal explanations (although complex, still just
cause and effects), and that is why I am still seeking the added “evolutionary” value
that the theory provides to the traditional concept of history.

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This objection is closely related to another problem which does not affect just
the Dual Inheritance Theory, but any theory applying evolutionary principles to
complex systems. On the contrary, Dual Inheritance Theory is one of those models
that are, in the business of cultural evolution, most aware of the problem, and that
tries to cope with it.124 The problem lies in the simultaneous operation of opposing
evolutionary forces. Many of the cultural evolution theories count only on a single
governing evolutionary force. Although such theories suffer from a great deal of
naiveté, they do not suffer from this particular problem. Theories that avoid the
naive flattening allow for a parallel operation of larger number of evolutionary
forces. The moment any part of the culture we focus our attention on is
simultaneously shaped by a number of mutually intersecting, complementary or
competing, or in other directions operating processes, it is necessary to decipher
these processes and determine their relative power (influence). Even if we recognize
that these processes are “evolutionary,” because there are also evolutionary forces
involved in their formation, I argued in previous paragraphs that the dominant
influence of those forces are not evolutionary in any defined sense. These forces and
hence also the processes should be therefore addressed through normal causal
explanations.
Furthermore, even if we would see subsequent cultural evolutionary
explanations as concerning only those evolutionary forces (and no others), I have not
yet encountered a way to decipher (and thus to determine the relativity of) their
influences. On the contrary, the fact that each of the examples used to illustrate the
various processes and their effects stops at an illustration of where only one
evolutionary force dominates, leads me to conclude that the degree of complexity
and tangledness of these forces pushes the limits of possibility of any attempt to
124 Because it allows me to draw attention to this fact, I include this critique into this section.
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disentangle and determine the relative influences of these forces in the process of
cultural change.125
I will conclude my critical analysis in this section with a remark which
concerns all theories of gene-culture coevolution in its generality, but links mainly to
the cultural evolutionary accounts in the next section (memetic accounts). I consider
it to be an important point in the criticism of gene-culture coevolution models, to
which draws our attention also D. Sperber’s observation (1996: 114) that: “Gene-
culture co-evolution is, however, too slow a process to explain cultural changes in
historical time.” In other words, even if we acknowledge the validity of these models,
we must be forever aware that we would have committed a methodological error if
we were to apply them to explanations of cultural changes that take place on the
background of “short” (and in this sense any “historical”) periods of time, as the
proponents of memetics frequently do.
125Additionally, examples that are used to show how cultural traits are subject to natural selection are
also always suspiciously of a technological character with which we can, at least to some extent,
determine the success or failure of an impact they might have had on biological fitness (environmental
deterioration, social collapse, conquest etc.). I have already pointed to a similar problem related to the
functionalist fallacy, in the section Group Selection Accounts, by one quotation from the work of D. S.
Wilson (2002: 31-32).
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iii) Memetic Accounts
Probably the most radical (and in general awareness also the best known) form of
contemporary theory of cultural evolution, in the meaning of genuine evolution of
culture I deal with in my analysis, is the Meme Theory. In the Meme Theory, it is
praiseworthy that its authors (and also supporters), in their effort for the theory to be
more than just analogy or metaphor, systematically try to fulfil all Darwinian
components and thus seek to be thoroughly able to maintain all of its main
fundamental elements and rules during its transfer to the socio-cultural domain. As
it will become clear from my analysis, there are remaining problems. The first one is
the fact that they use broader definitional parameters of evolution (being inspired by
Universal Darwinism) than the one I have chosen according to the criteria of neo-
Darwinian evolution by natural selection (the present standard). For example, they
define that any type of heritability is sufficient, and they do not hesitate to use the
Lamarckian type for the cultural transfer. The second one, and in case of memetics
much more pressing issue, is that even the components that match the definitional
criteria of contemporary neo-Darwinian theory by natural selection, despite the effort
they cannot comply to its strict requirements. For example, their replicator (meme)
does not produce its own true copies.
Memetic accounts see individual cultural forms (different cultural norms,
different technologies, different societies) as phenotypic variations which have
a different impact on the fitness of their bearers, whether the whole cultures or
individuals in given cultures. However, the success rate of their potential replications
in following generations is not bound only with this effect. As they are true
replicators, because the “offspring” is a true copy of its “parent,” we can say it is
maintaining the principle of heredity.
What does the Meme Theory look like? Its core comprises of several
fundamental assertions. (A) In order for the evolution to exist in any system, in order
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to talk about any process of change as of evolutionary process, it is necessary for this
process to fulfil the fundamental Darwinistic principles (the differentiation of the
Darwinian evolution from progressivism). (B) These principles are not defined by
modern neo-Darwinian restricting conditions which are only one of the possible
ways how to fulfil the general Darwinistic principles, such that it is valid for one
specific type of process, that of the biological change on Earth. Original Darwinistic
principles are much broader/more general, their form is invariable, but the content
can differ depending on the substrate (the differentiation of Darwinism/Generalized
Darwinism/Universal Darwinism and neo-Darwinism/biological neo-Darwinism).126
(C) These principles (defining the process for one thing as evolutionary and for
another as genuinely Darwinian) must encompass the possibility of determining, in
a given process: the replicators, the method of selection and retention/heritability
(gen view revolution127 brings a pressure for the determination of replicators rather
than for the fitness of the species). (D) Even the process of cultural change is an
actual evolutionary process; the role of replicators is played by memes, which are
being selected for, because some of them replicate better and more than others and
the method of heritability is Lamarckian (genuine second evolutionary process).
Already from this summary, primarily from the replicator in point (C), it is
evident how influential an inspirational source for the Meme Theory is the Dawkins’
revolutionary “selfish gene” concept of the evolution which, as we have already
seen, transferred the focal point of evolutionary thinking from what is beneficial for
the individual or the species to what is beneficial for the gene as the true replicator
and, in fact, the true beneficiary of all adaptations. 128 Even the renowned metaphor of
126 We have already encountered the philosophical stance of Darwinian monism under the term
Universal Darwinism (R. Dawkins, D. Dennett). Among its conditions belongs only that replicators
have to create their own true copies with infrequent mistakes and that they have certain power over
the probability of their own replication. There also needs to be a blind variation of the replicating units
and selective retention of some variants at the expense of others.
127 Its main architects were, among others, G. C. Williams a R. Dawkins.
128 As a connection of points (B) and (C) shows, it is in fact mainly about the special kind of
combination of the Universal Darwinism with neo-Darwinian elements (more accuracy in the question
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the selfish gene is in fact only an expression of this principle, which is based on
taking the “gene’s eye view” which always and primarily tends to struggle for only
one objective, the maximization of its replication.
This inspiration is not coincidental and has its consequences. Even though the
Meme Theory has been elaborated by others, R. Dawkins laid its foundations when
he admitted the possibility of existence of other forms of replicators than genes, and
he suggested the term meme specifically for replicators of cultural evolutionary
process (Dawkins, 1976: 192-194).129 The pressure on the determination, description
and elaboration of the replicator,130 as on the most important part in the whole
evolutionary thinking, is consequently emphasized with the same vigour also in the
Meme Theory. Such a concept of the evolutionary process has its advantages,
especially from the point of view of the “output discipline” which the theory
originates from and from which it is being transferred into another field of study,
that is, from the point of view of the evolutionary biology. It is fully in accordance
with the broadly accepted model of standard individual-gene selection and there is
not, in this regard, any controversy related to the group selection stance. It also
carries with it the rigour of thought that brought the “gene-view revolution” into
of replicators vs. vehicles). Neo-Darwinism is not (and cannot be from the definition) complete in this
combination (as it needs to leave the room for other kinds of selection and heritability).
129 With the idea of an independent evolutionary cultural unit, R. Dawkins does not start to build up
from the scratch. A year before him started to work with the similar concept F. T. Cloak (see 1975) and
R. Dawkins openly refers to him. According to Cloak, culture is being transmitted in tiny, unrelated
snippets which he calls “cultural instructions” or “corpuscles of culture” and he strictly differentiates
between instructions people have in their brains and end products of these instructions (technologies,
behaviours, institutions, types of social organisation etc.). R. Dawkins adopts the distinction only later
on, when he elaborates on it and transforms it into the biological language of genotypes and extended
phenotypes (see 1982), similarly as he did in his previous step when transforming independent
cultural unit into an autonomous replicator. In Extended phenotype he already specifies the meme as the
“a unit of information residing in a brain.” Cloaks’ “cultural instructions” also, beside other things,
work only for themselves and the good of their products and of their bearers is subservient to this
function.
130 And with it also the pressure to determine, elaborate and describe the “vehicle” (see Dawkins,
1976)/ “interactor” (Hull, 1988). The distinction between the replicator and the vehicle/interactor is the
next important step which the gene view revolution brought into the evolutionary biology. The
vehicle/interactor is the bearer of the replicator which interacts with its surroundings (e.g., DNA or
more frequently the individual organism).
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evolutionary biology and that accompanies many of its recent developments and
achievements. It does not suffer from the vagueness and confusion of some other
cultural evolutionary models that are often not specific enough about what process
they speak of (biological vs. cultural evolution) and what is their mutual relationship
and connection. Of course the bigger the advantages for the “output discipline” the
bigger the problem in the “input discipline,” in the field which the theory is being
transferred to – i.e., the social sciences, where it is very difficult to meet the
requirements of these elements. What elements I have in mind will be specifically
shown and addressed in my critical analysis, but let us continue now with the
positive lay out of the theory.
According to memetics there exists a genuine second replicator (meme),
a genuine cultural evolutionary process with its own unit of selection/transmission
and with its own way of transmission. The term meme was created as an analogy to
the term gene, including the deliberate shortening of the original form of the concept
into one-syllable version that would better refer to gene. As a unit of imitation, using
the Greek root, the unit would bear the name mimeme (“that which is being
imitated”). The analogy with genes is that while the genes are instructions for
making proteins carried in the cells of organisms, the memes are instructions for
carrying out behaviour that are carried either in the brains or in various cultural
artefacts (see Blackmore, 1999:17). Being elements of culture, they encompass
everything ranging from song refrains, recipes, computer viruses,131 fashion
eccentricities, architectonic trends, through ideas and discoveries, to religious beliefs
and customs, languages and writings.
131The example of computer virus is very popular in memetics due to its analogy with the entity of
biological virus which is extraordinarily simple (even when compared to bacteria) and seldom makes
more than replicating itself by exploiting other organism’s replicating capacities. However, the
usefulness of the analogy is clouded by the negative connotations of the word. Whether we label
something as a virus is arbitrary and to a certain extent dependent only on if the thing we speak about
in any way harms the system. When a similar entity benefits the system, we usually choose a different
name. The counterproductive value loadedness that reflects author’s atheism is clear, for example, in
the term “virtues of the mind” which R. Dawkins uses for the memeplex religion (see R. Dawkins,
1993).
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As it is apparent from the name of the unit, a specific replicator in the Meme
Theory entails also a specific way of transmission – imitation (copying/learning by
example). Not all thoughts are memes, only those that jump from brain to brain. The
imitation was and is one of the key concepts of the Meme Theory that stood at the
birth of the whole idea and which is being gradually specified and elaborated on, as
increasing aspirations of memetics to be a true scientific theory brings forward
directly related increasing demands for the terminology to be more accurate. For the
authors of the Meme Theory, the imitation is what makes our species different from
the others.132 However, its definition in memetics still remains uncertain and without
broader consensus, especially when we compare views of a larger amount of authors.
For example, S. Blackmore deserves credit for her efforts to define it more accurately,
but even in her case it is apparent from the definition itself how ambiguously broad
it stays. According to this definition (Blackmore, 1999:43) it comprises: “[…] passing
on information by using language, reading, and instruction, as well as other complex
skills and behaviours. Imitation includes any kind of copying of ideas and
behaviours from one person to another.”
132 For example S. Blackmore is willing to see only birdsongs as a real imitation in animal realm (non
humans) which according to her constitute an exception (1999: 48-50) and most other forms of
learning that usually is being considered an imitation among animals (as for example chimpanzees
fishing for termites by poking sticks into the mounds), she sees as a different type of social learning
(e.g., stimulus enhancement or local enhancement) combined with individual learning. Similar
conclusions reach comparative studies of children’s behaviour and behaviour of chimpanzees held
captivity which show that when confronted with same problems only children readily use imitation in
their solving. It seems that apes rarely ape (for extended discussion see Tomassello, 1996; and White et
al., 2004). Outcomes of these studies led at first to the characterizations of children as imitators and
chimpanzees as emulators (learning only about the results of others’ actions), and consequently to the
hypothesis of specifically human tendency to “over-imitate” (to imitate a complex course of action
despite the revealed truth that there is an easier way to achieve the same results /copying adult’s
wasteful strategy, even when doing so leads to bad outcomes). Over-imitation receives a lot of
attention in contemporary evolutionary psychology/evolutionary anthropology and there are many
individuals (and whole teams) devoted to the testing of this hypothesis (see Whiten et al., 2009). The
level of attention reflects also the magnitude of interest dedicated to human tendency to “over-
imitate” by the theorists of cultural evolution. For some of them this tendency constitutes fundaments
of psychological mechanism on which the cultural transmission is built and it also stands in the centre
of the debate about if and how is the culture specific to human species.
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The transmission of imitations is a non-genetic transmission, but as with the
genetic transmission, also can occur in two modes. Either vertically, from one
generation to another on a long-term basis, or horizontally, similarly to how virus
gets spread in the population during an epidemic. 133 The imitation is also absolutely
essential for the argument that the meme is the true replicator, because in other
forms of social learning, the true replication does not occur, as, in fact, the copying of
behaviour does not take place, even though it may look like it at first sight. In most
cases, it is more about the second individual being directed/lead to the situation in
which he invents the very same/very similar behaviour that has been already
invented by the first individual. In such case it is not a behaviour which would be
transmitted/replicated (that would be built upon, variations of which would be
selected etc.). Without the true replication there is no true heredity and without the
true heredity there is no true evolution.
Some memes are more successful in their replication than others. On what
basis does the selection of memes occur? Both the role of selector and the role of
selective environment are played by the human mind. S. Blackmore differentiates
two types of reasons. The first is related to the physiological set-up of the human
mind, with how our senses, memory, attention and other similar processes operate,
and belongs more within the scope of psychology. The second is related to the nature
of the memes themselves, to how they can interact and cluster with each other, what
kind of tricks they can use, alternatively, it relates to the specific cultural
evolutionary processes, and it is this second type that is the “true” domain of
memetics (see Blackmore, 1999: 16).
Now I will briefly introduce some of the most influential authors and a short
history of memetics. Among its three most important thinkers, each of them with
specific contribution, rank R. Dawkins, D. Dennett and S. Blackmore. If I am to use
133In the transmission of imitations S. Blackmore further differentiates whether the process is
Lamarckian (copying-the-product), where every phenotype is also a genotype that gets passed on to
the next generation, or Weismannian (copying-the-instructions), where the differences of individual
phenotypes do not get passed on (see 1999: xi).
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metaphors, R. Dawkins conceived of the idea in 1976 in the conclusion of his book
The Selfish Gene,134 afterwards, D. Dennett explored the bedrock, staked out the plot
and levelled the parcel,135 and in 1999, S. Blackmore erected the building when she
developed the fundamentals into the complete Meme Theory in the book The Meme
Machine.136
The basic comparison with other contemporary theories, that relate to the
cultural evolution and which I am dealing with in my thesis, is the following.
Compared to EWCE approach (and its main inspirational source, i.e., approach of
evolutionary psychology137), Meme Theory is a theory of a genuine cultural evolution
134 As we have seen, R. Dawkins is the main founding figure not only in the sense that he coined the
term meme and that he, in this or that form, played around with many ideas that now constitute the
pillars of memetics. But he is also an expert and authority in the field of biological neo-Darwinian
evolutionary theory, a pioneer and an uncompromising defender of standard individual-gene
selection, and furthermore a proponent of scientistic biologizing philosophical position of the
Universal Darwinism (leaving his committed atheism aside as ideally it should not be reflected in his
scientific endeavours). All these elements influence memetics either by being indivisible components
of assumptions of the theory, as with the Universal Darwinism, or by placing demands on the
products that want to increase their prestige/credibility by being able to show connection to an aureole
of the name of R. Dawkins, e.g. reluctance towards group selection. Marketing dimension of this point
is clearly visible on the cover of the book of S. Blackmore’s The Meme Machine (1999) where the name
R. Dawkins who authored the foreword, has the same font type and nearly the same font size as the
name of the author of the book itself. The position of R. Dawkins to growing and developing Meme
Theory is in fact positive but at the same time moderate and reserved. The reason behind is that his
original intention behind the introduction of possible existence of another replicator was much more
modest than some memeticists might have wished for and was more related to the emphasis of the
position of Universal Darwinism (i.e., different replicators that genes might exist) than to the certainty
about the existence of replicator in the domain of cultural change (see Blackmore, 1999: xvi). In the
aforementioned foreword to S. Blackmore’s The Meme Machine (1999: xvi) we can find expressions like:
“I do not know whether she will be judged too ambitious in this enterprise, and I would even fear for
her if I did not know her redoubtable qualities as a fighter.”
135 American philosopher D. Dennett (1991) made the meme the corner stone of his philosophy of
mind (see his book Consciousness Explained) and incorporated it (1995) to his other evolutionary
scientistic epistemological and ontological conceptions defending the strong adaptationist position
(see his Darwin’s Dangerous Idea). S. J. Gould chose for his position the term “Darwinian
fundamentalism” (see Gould, 1997).
136 Despite the increasing recent production (see Distin, 2005; and 2011), her book stays until the
present day the best introduction into memetics. Nevertheless, her book was not the first try in this
matter. At least two different books were dedicated to the subject preceded Blackmore’s, R. Brodie’s
Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (1996) and A. Lynch’s Thought Contagion: How Belief
Spreads through Society (1996). The title of her book refers to the previous attempts to see the brain as
the “Darwin machine” (see Calvin, 1987; 1996; or Plotkin, 1994).
137 Some see evolutionary psychology as the “modern successor to sociobiology” (S. Blackmore, 1999:
35-36), however, this understanding is simplifying and can be in many ways misleading and
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(evolution of culture) where there is a specific replicator with a special way of
transmission, both specific for culture (usually even specifically human culture,
making in this sense the human evolution special). In addition, this process of
cultural evolution is being understood as independent/autonomous on the genetic
evolution to the extent that cultural replicators are driven only by their own interests
(being copied) regardless of what kind of impact this interest will have on the gene’s
fitness.
The impact on the gene can be neutral (if the interest of memes are different
from the interest of genes), but it can be also useful (if the interest of memes is in
agreement with the interest of genes) or harmful (if the interest of memes is opposite
to the interest of genes). The important thing is that for the memetic cultural
evolution itself it does not need to bother us, because memetics conceptually
disconnects the processes of cultural and biological evolution. It explicitly opposes
the autonomous process of the cultural evolution to be questioned by anything and it
stands the ground especially against the notion it should be obliged to serve
biological evolution (e.g., to be always compelled to show biological advantages
memes carry for their bearers). S. Blackmore expresses this attitude in a following
way (1999: 31): “If memes are replicators, as I am convinced they are, then they will
not act for the benefit of the species, for the benefit of the individual, for the benefit of
the genes, or indeed for the benefit of anything but themselves. That is what it means
to be a replicator.”
Of all the theories of the cultural evolution, memetics most openly swears
allegiance to the concept of Universal Darwinism (although it is an implicit part of all
Darwinian cultural evolution approaches). Similarly as the comparison with EWCE
approach, turns out also the comparison with the gene-culture co-evolution theory,
I have referred to couple of times that has arisen from the sociobiological background
inaccurate. They often share strong adaptationist program, yet, evolutionary psychology does not
limit itself to social behaviour and contrary to some sociobiologists (with E. O. Wilson as the first and
foremost), evolutionary psychologists almost never cross into the domain of cumulative cultural
evolution (in the sense of genuine evolution of culture).
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and was created by C. J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson. Although authors in this theory
create a discrete category of the “culturgene” as the “basic unit of inheritance in
cultural evolution” (Lumsden & Wilson, 1981: x), it stands always in the end in
a subordinate position to the gene as the ultimate arbiter. Maladaptive culturgene
can have its own way only temporarily, because it gets gradually eliminated by the
dominant biological evolution.
In their cultural evolution theory, L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W. Feldman
adhere to the same principle. Even though they focus in more detail also on the
modelling of the transmission of maladaptive cultural traits (as they label the unit of
selection), maladaptivness is in the end determined by the impact of the cultural trait
on the gene (see Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman, 1981). Therefore, even this theory differs
from the Meme Theory in this fundamental aspect. On the other hand, the theory
elaborates on numerous elements that are now necessary equipment of the
contemporary cultural evolutionary thinking (with memetics being in the lead). It
differentiates the vertical and the horizontal transmission, uses the concept of
cultural fitness denoting fitness for the survival of cultural traits themselves and
creates mathematical models of the cultural transmission. The essential difference
between memetics and this theory lies again in the broader way of the transmission
of cultural traits in contrast with the one with which the meme transmission works.
The memetic transmission is restricted by definition to imitation only (as a specific
type of learning distinct from other types), while L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W.
Feldman include also imprinting or conditioning.138
When dealing with the issue of autonomy of cultural evolution on biological
evolution, memetics is closest to the Dual Inheritance Theory, as P. J. Richerson and
R. Boyd treat their cultural unit as an autonomous replicator that can co-evolve with
138 It is important to mention here that the stress on narrowing down the way of the meme’s
transmission to imitation which is related to the goal of also narrowing down the definition of meme
itself (in order to make it more accurate) is characteristic for the classical version of memetics. Some
memetic approaches use broader definitions. E.g., R. Brodie works with conditioning as with memetic
(see 1996) and J. Delius includes in memetic transmission all forms of social learning (see 1989).
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the biological replicator (gene) either mutualistically or antagonistically. Yet Dual
Inheritance Theory works with the concept of social learning when dealing with the
cultural form of inheritance (similarly as L. L. Cavalli-Sforza and M. W. Feldman) and
thus has, in this point, broader scope than memetics, which deliberately restricts the
“inheritance” only to imitation as one of the forms of social learning.
One of the important differences of memetics from D. S. Wilson’s theory of
cultural evolution as well as from Dual Inheritance Theory lies in much higher
vigilance towards group selection (at least in the classical version of memetics139 of
R. Dawkins, D. Dennett and S. Blackmore). A partial reason is the influential status of
R. Dawkins in this version of memetics.140 Nevertheless, when dealing with the
influence of religion on gene, S. Blackmore plays with the concept carefully. Though
she begins by showing how many special conditions have to be met so that the group
selection can play its part, she continues by stating that religion as the memeplex can
fulfil these conditions. Specifically, it can create the pressure on decreasing of
differences in biological fitness within the groups and increasing the differences
between the groups while simultaneously increasing the group extinction rate.141
139 In my whole layout of the Theory of Memes, due to limited space I take into account only the most
representative, i.e., “classical” version. The memetic literature is dynamically developing and today
exist many versions of memetics differing on many points that must be left unnoticed. Some
important authors, for example, use the meme as a label for their cultural unit and at the same time
they do not uphold it as an independent replicator which is otherwise one of the main characteristics
of the classical version. In this fashion, for example, W. H. Durham does not agree that the human
evolution should by this way fundamentally different from evolution of other organisms and in his
concept of memetics claims that the biological and cultural evolution work as complementary, on the
principle of increasing the inclusive fitness. He describes the approach that works with the autonomy
of another replicator that at a certain point singles human evolution out as fundamentally different
from the evolution of other species, as an exaggerated expansion of the genetic analogy that is
“strongly anti-Darwinian” (Durham, 1991:183).
140 This element is well apparent from the words of R. Dawkins who in the foreword to the
S. Blackmore’s The Meme Machine speaks about those who are in opposition against the standard
individual-gene selection and results to which it leads. According to him (see in Blackmore, 1999: xv):
“Biologists are sharply divided into those for whom this logic is as clear as daylight, and those (even
some very distinguished ones) who just do not understand it – who naïvely trot out the obvious
cooperativeness of genes and unitariness of organisms as though they somehow counted against the
‘selfish gene’ view of evolution.”
141 We find the same argument also in D. S. Wilson (2002) or in cultural group selection.
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In simple terms, religion decreases within-group differences by dictating
dietary habits, sexual practices, promoting cooperation and regulating aggression
within groups while it increases between-group differences by excluding out-groups
from the same rules and on the top of that it helps to motivate warfare towards out-
groups thus increasing rates of group extinction. Thus she is able to explain the
problem posed to her by her world-view, i.e. why people, even in the “enlightened
scientific age,” still incline to “fake” religious beliefs and behaviours. The answer is
that people are “forced” by their religious genes which in the long-term co-evolution
became a part of human nature. But unfortunately, the characteristic trait of
Blackmore’s handling of religion is that it does not complete the same idea in each
and every way, primarily there where it should lead by the same token to the
conclusions putting “world” religions into a positive light. As thanks to the similar
process, we should all be bearers of innate psychological tendencies for, for example,
self-sacrificial/selfless altruism to our coreligionists with no control mechanisms or
compensations in place needed (see arguments in parts devoted to altruism).
However, we will not find such “conclusions” in S. Blackmore’s work.
Memetic Accounts in Religious Studies

How does the application of memetics actually look in Religious Studies? For the
representatives of the classical form of memetics it is necessary to first separate their
metaphysical opinions from the value-neutral parts of the theory, which could be
useful for the Study of Religions. Authors such as R. Dawkins, D. Dennett or
S. Blackmore do not do this separation themselves. Although they try to act as
objective/independent scientists in their treatment of religions, their atheistic agenda
eventually prevails. So what usefulness remains for the Study of Religions after we
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get past images of a “virus,” an “infection,” an “extreme bizarreness” or just a “plain
falsehood of religious beliefs?”142
First and foremost, it is a theorizing about the emergence and
spreading/transmitting of religious beliefs and practices. R. Dawkins came up with
the idea that individual memes are able to clump together and create self-sustaining
complexes. He called these “co-adapted meme complexes.” This term was later
shortened by H. C. Speel to “memeplex” (1995), and further developed by
S. Blackmore (1999) who established its use. In the foundation of the memeplex lies
again the analogy with genes that also form complexes that replicate more efficiently
than they would individually. They are groups of mutually compatible and
supportive memes that cohabitate the environments of individual minds. Because
each of these co-memes creates the whole of the group, they tend to be favoured
when the environment gets dominated by the others.
On some level, thanks to these benefits, memes are fighting for their survival
and reproduction, as a part of the memeplexes, and competing with other
memeplexes. Apart from reanimating and the recombination of naïve, and in the past
endlessly repeated anti-religious ideas about the origins and functions of religion
(e.g., religions as irrefutable cognitive illusions; false explanations of origins of things
or comfort providers), it brings also some inspiring and mainly empirically testable
hypotheses about the possible mechanisms of the transmission of religious ideas
through combination and mutual support with other processes (e.g., using ritualistic
altering of emotional states, beauty or ecstatic experience to help promote or
modulate desired outcomes; boosting confidence towards charismatic individuals;
imitating the behaviour of successful etc.).
When we ask, if there exists anything, except for these hypotheses (which are
not particularly associated with memetics or with what specific memetics brings in,
142S. Blackmore specifically says (1999: 187) that: “to anyone uninfected with any Christian memes
these ideas must seem bizarre in the extreme.” She also continues with regard to religions (1999: 188):
“Dawkins (1993) explains how religious memes, even if they are not true, can be successful.” Or
similarly (1999: 189): “The religious answers may be false but at least they are answers.”
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because these questions were frequently asked by social psychology in the past, and
the innovation lies more in an indicated use/transfer of its findings or methods into
the study of religious behaviour), what makes memetics different from all other
versions of co-evolutionary theorizing about religion, the answer is yes. The
difference is in how strongly memetics, in its conception of genuine evolution of
culture (meme as a true second replicator), rejects tying the evolution of cultural
variants back to a biological/genetic advantage.
Religions, as exceptionally powerful memeplexes, can be, from the memetic
point of view, a driving evolutionary force even for biological/genetic evolution.
Evolutionary force that is powerful enough to “stand alone” (regardless of its impact
on a gene). E.g., if there are genes that incline you to be more religious in the first
place, that promote your religious behaviour, and this religious behaviour brings
better status and with it better reproduction, they would spread in the population
gene pool at the expense of other genes. Therefore the memetic environment can
influence whether genes for religious behaviour are positively selected for or not.
And at the same time, the difference between memetics and other co-evolutionary
approaches does not lie in their disagreement about if there are hypothetical cases, in
which we can argue, that culture (e.g. religion) has resources to influence genetic
evolution, but in how strong they consider the influence of this evolutionary force.
To summarize, memetics manifests in Religious Studies mainly in the so-
called “Cultural Maladaptionist Hypothesis” (for the name see Bulbulia, 2008: 68) or
sometimes the “Cultural Parasite Hypothesis.” Simply put, it is a combination of co-
evolution using autonomous cultural evolution, and the adaptationist program, but
with the important “final plot twist,” in which it sees religion as a cultural
maladaptive parasite or virus. Maladaptive in the sense, that it harms genetic fitness
of its bearers be those human individuals (R. Dawkins, 1976; 2006) or human groups
(S. Blackmore, 1999; D. Dennett, 2006).
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Critical Analysis of Memetic Accounts

How does memetics turn up in the main points of my critical analysis? As all
previously considered theories of cultural evolution, which are used in the current
study of religion, it does not fare particularly well. First, let me reiterate once again
the main points that constitute my critical analysis. Its main objective is to find out if
the theory of the evolution of culture in question meets all the necessary
requirements of neo-Darwinian evolution. In other words, is the given theory of
cultural evolution a legitimate evolutionary theory of culture, or is it only a poor
metaphor and misleading analogy giving rise to false beliefs/hopes. “The necessary
requirements” and the “defining criteria” of the neo-Darwinian evolution are such:
there are replicators in the system (units that are able to create true copies of
themselves/high fidelity replicators), they are fighting among themselves for limited
resources and with ideal conditions, their numbers will increase exponentially.
Random errors (mutations) occur during the copying process, which can lead to
involuntary (blind) increases in replications, and consequently over many
generations to the gradual accumulation of this error within a given population. This
process is mechanistic and the success of replicators is determined solely by the
number of their copies within the considered population.
Even if the Theory of Memes in this critical analysis also fares poorly (as with
dual inheritance or group selection accounts), the reasons, that lead to its failure, are
somewhat different than they are for the previously considered theories. This
difference lies in how it fails to meet the requirements, rather than which ones. This
is because memetics in its classical form, from all compared approaches, shares and
applies most rigidly, and to the greatest extent, all the defining criteria of evolution
I have chosen. Its failure in my critical analysis is not based on the fact, that it defines
evolution in a manner inconsistent with my definition, rather it is due to its attempts
to meet the criteria with a substrate which proofs resistant to this effort (unless you
are not afraid to seriously distort some relevant facts).
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Put differently, the problem is, that even though memetic authors try to
consistently maintain all basic elements and rules of the theory of natural selection,
this effort fails, because the cultural changes are not subject to these elements and
rules, and subsequently cultural variants do not meet the definition of replicators.
Firstly, most parts of “culture” do not consist of small, independent (discrete) pieces
of information, so that the gene/meme metaphor might represent more than just
a vague analogy. Secondly, even if it did, these entities (“independent/discrete
pieces”) almost never create exact copies of themselves (high fidelity replications) in
cultural transmission, which makes cumulative cultural evolution impossible,
because it effectively removes the effects of natural selection from the game.
I elaborate in greater detail on both these statements in two independent arguments.
To be able to identify anything as a replicator, first we need to be able to
distinguish it from anything else. The surest way to do this is to find out the physical
constitution of replicators. The fact that we are unable to present such a thing in the
case of memes, is not that surprising.143 Much more surprising is the fact that we still
lack to the present day a theoretical definition that would tell us what it is that
constitutes the unit of meme. How big of a unit deserves the term meme? Is
Buddhism a meme? Or is a meme only the doctrine that makes it possible to reach
enlightenment? Or is it just the meditation technique leading to this
enlightenment?144 If we are not able to define “the smallest indivisible functional
143 Nobody knows what memes are made of and where exactly should we look for them. They are
supposed to exist in the brain, but the only thing we can work with are the resultant “phenotypes” in
populations, and unlike most genes’ phenotypes they are rarely part of the organisms’ bodies. But are
the memes really only in the brain? Or could it be an information/instruction physically stored in
many different ways (e.g., written down on a paper or imprinted in the arch of a bridge by a builder’s
technique)? What is a meme, a meme-vehicle and what is already a meme-phenotype? In memetics
there is no consensus on these fundamentals and similarly unsatisfying is the fact that even if we
would define a meme solely as information in the brain, the brain structure of one meme will never be
the same in two different brains.
144 Some classic examples used in memetic accounts are: poem, dance, fashion, political ideology,
scientific theory, melody, sentence, equation, belief, thought, word, religious ritual, agricultural
practice, philosophical puzzle, recipe for a meal, instructions how to build cellphones, cars, buildings,
computers, or instructions for origami, court etiquette or table manners (see Dawkins, 1976; Dennett,
1995; Blackmore, 1999).
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unit,” and it is possible at the same time to enlarge this unit as needed to contain
nearly anything, it becomes useless - everything and nothing at the same time.145
The second problematic aspect lies in the mode of transmission of cultural
variants; that is, in the inability to meet the required condition of high fidelity
replication. The emergence and transmission of cultural variants may be caused by
the imitation of behaviour, but if we look at the process more closely, we find out,
that it is a transformation rather than true replication. This is because while one
cultural variant induces in one mind one kind of behaviour, the spectator of this
behaviour, who tries to imitate the same kind of action, is able to do so by creating in
his mind a cultural variant that is completely different from the original.146 The new
product is a mixture of something “preserved” and of something “newly
constructed,”147 which is shaped to fit the capacities, needs and interests of the
transmitter.148 Most factors that guide inferences that take place in the minds of
imitators (those who learn), are highly idiosyncratic and they “have to do with the
individual’s unique location in time and space” (Sperber, 1996: 114; see also Sperber,
2000). The fact that even when this is the case, there exists a far greater resemblance
among cultural items than one would expect by observing the actual degrees of
transformation in cultural transmission, and requires an explanation. However,
explanation focused on other systematic mechanisms than the mechanism of
replication.
145 Between the years 1997 - 2005 the online Journal of Memetics was published. But the fact that even
after eight years there was no considerable progress in the “discipline” due to problems of definitions,
led to discontinuation of the journal and, according to some, today is memetics generally considered
a failed endeavour (see Edmonds, 2005).
146 The multiplicity and varying number of “parents”, or sources, for the same item, is a typical aspect
of cultural transmission.
147 This is the result of extensive constructive cognitive processes.
148 For example, S. Atran (2001) states that in cultural propagation, imitation is the exception, not the
rule. Similarly, D. Sperber claims that (1996: 101): “representations don’t in general replicate in the
process of transmission, they transform.” The bottom line evident in the writings of both authors
suggests that it is wrong to assume that processes of cultural transmission are determined wholly by
inputs accepted or chosen by the receiving organism.
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The way the systematic factors of transformation in cultural transmission
function was elaborated on by D. Sperber in his concept of cultural attractors.149 In
short, Sperber explains how it is possible, despite the previously mentioned
objection, that there exists a significant stability in cultural variations across space
and time. He suggests that it is not true copying, but that every new form of cultural
variant tends to gravitate towards powerful cultural attractors that ensure that
deviations cancel each other out. These attractors are caused by biasing factors
which, if commonly shared within a culture of one population, create cultural
attractors rooted in the local cultural context (see Sperber, 1996: 108).150 It may be
happy endings, certain lucky numbers which are preferred, and are thus easier to
remember due to the cultural context, a set core values, used technological practices
etc., that make all members of the same population at any one time to be attracted in
the same directions.
This idea was modified and developed into a new form, which is even more
interesting for Religious Studies, because it is more specific to religion, by P. Boyer in
his concept of minimal counter-intuitiveness of successful religious ideas. Boyer
elaborates mainly on the idea of universal attractors,151 i.e., attractors rooted in
universal (or at least genetically determined aspects of) human psychology (see
2001).152 The concept elaborates upon what makes religious ideas more attractive,
more attention grabbing and more memorable compared to other ideas, as well as
what makes some religious ideas more successful than others. Boyer concludes that
this advantage has a lot to do with specific types of violations of our intuitive
149 For an extended argument of epidemiological models of cultural transmission see Sperber (1996).
150 D. Sperber also suggests that a central role in stabilizing and directing the transmission of beliefs
towards cultural attractors, or points of convergence, is played by modular mental structures (Sperber,
1996).
151 Not necessarily using the same terminology.
152 I chose the word “elaborates” purposefully because D. Sperber sees cultural attractors as a specific
type of attractors, but also speaks about universal types of attractors. Moreover, I use the word
“mainly” as it was this emphasis that proved to be a major contribution of the contemporary classical
CSR work Explaining Religion (2001). However this does not mean that the author intended to question
or marginalize the importance of cultural attractors.
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ontology (folk biology, folk physics, folk psychology, etc.). In other words, there are
tacit principles that guide people’s inferences in many domains, and these tacit
principles are identical in all normal minds. These are responsible for the existence of
commonalities of cultural information cross-culturally (its stability and rough
similarity of its versions in different minds) despite exposure to non-identical input,
as all humans at any one time are attracted in the same directions (see Boyer, 2001;
Boyer & Bergstrom, 2008; Sperber & Hirschfeld, 2004).
The preceding paragraphs state that cultural transmission does not work on
the principle of accurate imitation of behaviours, transmission processes that would
be compatible with natural selection. That is to say, it does not work in such a way
that the behaviours would replicate themselves accurately (with some degree of
mutation), so that it could be meaningfully subjected to processes of natural
selection.153 But even if we admit, for the sake of argument, that dominant replication
by imitation does in fact occur, we would still be unable to get rid of the problem of
low fidelity: natural selection cannot work unless the mutation rate is low (see
Williams, 1966: 22-23),154 and in the case of culture the mutation rate can be, in some
cases, exceedingly high.155 As we can see, for example in the children’s game of
Chinese whisper (whether with an imitation of sounds or images). For this reason
some authors argue that evolution can occur only with digital systems and that
memes, unlike genes, are not digital (see Maynard Smith, 1996). In the analogous
type of transmission, there is simply too great a loss of information, and thus it is
153 The same attitude holds, for example, in the works of A. Norenzayan and S. Atran, whose opinion
could be used as a concise summary of a standard CSR model to this question (2004: 757): “With some
exceptions, ideas do not reproduce or replicate in minds in the same way that genes replicate in DNA.
They do not generally spread from mind to mind by imitation. It is biologically prepared, culturally
enhanced, richly structured minds that generate and transform recurrent convergent ideas from often
fragmentary and highly variable input.”
154 For example in the case of genes, a typical rate of mutation might be “one mutation per million
replications” (Sperber, 1996: 103), making even small selective bias with time cumulatively strongly
effective.
155 Even R. Dawkins admits that in cultural replication (1982: 112): “there may be a certain ‘mutational’
element in every copying event” which might be one of the differences that “may prove sufficient to
render the analogy with genetic natural selection worthless or even positively misleading.”
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incompatible with the evolutionary processes that require extremely high fidelity
replications and low mutation rate. Furthermore, the replicator analogy fails also
because, unlike the gene, it might not have a lifespan long enough to be able to create
any real impact on the life of an organism.
Another essential point of my analysis brings us to the condition which
determines the process as evolutionary only if it is random, mechanical and
unintentional. And this is the weak point of every theory of cultural evolution that is
dependent upon Lamarckian inheritance.156 Memetic evolution works with the
inheritance of acquired characteristics from the definition, because a meme is defined
widely as “that, which is imitated” and the majority of imitated things in cultural
transmission involves copying the end products (phenotypes), not only instructions
to end products. If the memeticists are not willing to distinguish between these two
types of imitation (imitation of instruction and imitation of resulting product),
memetics will not avoid the pitfalls of Lamarckian heritability. Yet nobody wants to
take this step, because an application of this distinction on cultural traits would be
coerced, and more often than not, impossible.
For the aforementioned reasons I fully understand and sympathize with the
writings of authors, such as S. J. Gould or M. Midgley, who refer to memes as to
a “meaningless metaphor” (see S. J. Gould, 1996), “an empty and misleading
metaphor,” “mythical entities,” or a “useless and essentially superstitious notion”
(see M. Midgley, 1994). Transitive properties require equivalence, i.e., an identity of
the properties of the units of selection. Without this equivalence, the law-like
processes cannot be simply carried over to other kinds of units.
In previous analyses I have often referred to the EWCE approach to the study
of religion which programmatically does not work with an autonomous process of
cumulative cultural evolution. I have also suggested that it is in my opinion
a possible, and at the same time, meaningful alternative of an evolutionary study of
156 In this particular context the term means: passing things that you learned and acquired during your
lifetime on to your offspring.
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religion (coherent as well as promising and viable). The next chapter is dedicated to
a more detailed presentation of an EWCE approach to the study of culture in general,
of the fundamental points of its theory, of its main inspirational sources (especially
evolutionary psychology), and finally presents some examples of specific
applications of EWCE approach to the study of religion, evident in current CSR
scholarship.
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EVOLUTIONARY STUDY OF CULTURE

WITHOUT CULTURAL EVOLUTION
Inspirational sources of EWCE approach to the study of culture are numerous. First
and foremost is evolutionary psychology, but it employs theories and methods from
other cognitive, behavioural and evolutionary sciences as well, especially from
cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology,
experimental psychology, social psychology, behavioural economics, behavioural
ecology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary anthropology, Evolutionary Game
Theory or ethology.
From my point of view, as it is clear from its definition, a characteristic of the
EWCE approach to the study of culture is that it does not work with cultural evolution
in the sense of autonomous cumulative process of evolution of culture. Because of the
strong position that evolutionary psychology holds within it, I class there primarily
those accounts which deal with evolutionarily developed architecture of the human
mind and with how this architecture influences (predetermines) the form and the
success of different cultural variants.157
From the perspective of theories analysed in the preceding chapters, it might
seem that this is the least radical, the most restrained way of employing evolutionary
theory for the explanation of sociocultural phenomena, and in comparison with them
it truly is. It causes the least amount of controversies, because, in its explanations, it
157Accounts defined in such a way also form the centre of the CSR mainstream. A standard CSR
model (for more information, see Jensen, 2009) maintains that cross-cultural recurrences of religious
phenomena might be explained through constraints of cognitive mechanisms of the human mind
acquired in the process of natural selection. If we tried to search for ideological predecessors of EWCE
account in Religious Studies, we would find that certain indications have already existed in the early
history of our field of study, even though in a rather rudimentary form. E.g. E. Westermarck may be
considered as being their bearer. However, at that time, his approach to the study of cultural
phenomena was crushed both by the contemporary opposition (E. Durkheim) and by the popularity
of classical theories of cultural evolution.
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does not need to cross the borders of standard neo-darwinistic individual-gene natural
selection theory, neither in the sense of the transfer of natural selection into the field of
cultural change explanation, nor in the sense of the propagation of group selection
theory.158 On the other hand, radicality is a relative category, i.e. it depends on which
theories we compare the EWCE approach with; if we compare it with classical
approaches of Religious Studies, an array of substantial differences become apparent.
I classify, among the most important differences, the fact that it fundamentally
changes the perspective of traditional approaches. It actually transfers the centre of
attention to what precedes the culture and what enables it, and starts its study with
the “cultural setting” of the human mind. If I, temporarily and for the purpose of
illustrating what I have in my mind, exaggeratedly simplified both positions and
transferred them into black-and-white perspective, one would see that EWCE
approach studies the culture in the way it emerges from human mind while it is
affected by appropriate stimuli from the external surroundings. In contrast,
“traditional Religious Studies approaches” (as I, temporarily, typify them in
a simplified way) start the study of culture from what is external to the human mind,
from what is transferred. Neither of the approaches is, of course, that simplifying,
and even the EWCE approach pays a great deal of attention to models of
dissemination of cultural elements and does not leave this “disseminative” part of
culture without reflexion. Nevertheless, for stressing my point, it is important to note
158The supporters of EWCE approach to the study of culture, who overlap with the overall majority of
evolutionary psychologists, with their founders J. Tooby, L. Cosmides, D. Simons and others leading
the list, see the “genic selection revolution” as one of the milestones in the history of evolutionary
biology, without which the discipline would still be drown in preceding pervasive and unanchored
teleology (fitness teleology), which was accompanying it up to 60s of the 20 th century when dealing
with these issues. Getting rid of “Darwinism’s benign collectivism,” which was brought, among other
things, by the revolution, was according to J. Tooby (2012): “[t]he most important advance in
evolutionary biology since Darwin.” Genic selection revolution (meaning the same as gene view
revolution) actually brought not only the pressure on more precise specification of units of selection
(differentiation of replicators and vehicles), but also more rigid demands on what has to form part of
the argumentation designating something as adaptation. Presently, one of them is the obligation to
show the sequence of causal steps, how the specific setting/combination/grouping of genes
cause/relate to phenotypic effects/adaptation (in the body or external to it – extended phenotype) and
which interaction with the world of those phenotypic effects/adaptations cause the increase of the
replication frequency of certain genes in following generations.
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that the EWCE approach insists on not underestimating the “induced/generated”
part of the culture in the study of culture, and in its own eyes it thus balances the
existing one-sided focus of the social sciences.159
EWCE approach to the study of culture is usually accompanied by two
elements which arise from expanding on those fundamental suppositions. The first
one deals with the effort to explain in such a framework the cultural diversity which
we encounter in the world. If we suppose that culture is mainly generated/induced
by innate psychological mechanisms which are the products of the evolutionary
history of our species, and if we suppose that all these mechanisms are basically the
same across all human populations, why are not all the cultures the same? The
answer is that on a certain level of generalization they are actually the same and that
the cultural variants which we are able to perceive from closer up, are generated by
the difference in external stimuli, which affect different innate psychological
mechanisms or create their different combinations. A comparison to be brought up
here is the proverbial nine tenths of an iceberg under the surface. When this
approach deals with the issue of cultural differences, it addresses not only the
difference caused by socially transmitted information, but also the way that different
settings interact with different modules.160
The second one relates to a thorough extension of natural selection when
applied on the development of the human mind. If we suppose that, in our
evolutionary history, sufficiently long-term and stable pressures on dealing with
various types of problems existed, it is possible to count on the fact that similar
conditions induce the need for precise specialization of adaptational mechanisms,
159 Compare the differentiation of epidemiological and evoked culture and the concept of Standard Social
Science Model by J. Tooby and L. Cosmides (1992: 115-116). Probably the most famous version of the
argument presents N. Chomsky in his conception of universal grammar. For the extended argument,
see also S. Atran (1990), J. Sørensen (2005), or P. Boyer (1994), who states that the major part of every
religious concept is generated “spontaneously” by the setting of our innate psychology, which – if
triggered by the right stimulus in the form of a specific type of information – forms automatically
a huge amount of inferences and intuitions, which were not part of the stimulus itself.
160 Nevertheless, it is an issue which stays in the centre of critical objections against evolutionary
psychological approaches to the study of culture.
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which would be able to deal with the specific types of problems with sufficient
effectiveness. The answer is that the human mind is not a general-purpose machine,
but it is composed of a series of specialized cognitive modules. The best example of
this type of evolutionary psychological solution proposed by J. Tooby and
L. Cosmides is the Theory of Massive Modularity.161
For an even better understanding of this research framework, it is possible to
reverse the question. Subsequently, we do not ask into which components it is
possible to divide the human mind, but from which components (psychological
adaptations) it is possible to put together/assemble the human mind. To explain
human nature, we need to map the natural human psychological adaptations. To be
able to explain religiosity as a constituent of the human nature, we need to map the
natural human psychological adaptation that constitutes the religiosity.
The process is actually very simple and one has to only bear in mind the
famous criticism of S. J. Gould and R. Lewontin (1979) not to become the victim of
the exaggerated adaptacionistic program. Firstly, to (A) try to show, in every
examined behaviour, whether it is not a genetically developed adaptation to some of
the conditions of our ancestral environment. If yes, then to (B) subsequently identify
which psychological mechanisms it is based on. It is crucial and extremely useful, for
every research strategy in any behavioural evolutionary science, not to conflate these
two distinct steps into one. They were famously clarified as two different
complementary methodologies (and not competing alternatives) by the Nobel Prize
winner Niko Tinbergen (1963), who divided evolutionary inquiry into four questions
which he termed “survival value,” “causation,” “ontogeny,” and “evolution”
(phylogeny of a given trait). In those he showed that we need to make distinction
between: (1) ultimate explanations which are concerned with fitness consequences or
161Against this concept of “founding generation” of evolutionary psychology, a number of critical

voices have arisen, which represent alternative view on the functioning of human cognition in the
evolutionary perspective. For extended arguments, see K. Sterelny (2003) or D. J. Buller (2005).
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survival value (why questions) and (2) proximate explanations which examine the
mechanisms underlying behaviour (how questions).
This principle is true for studying animal behaviour and it is especially true
for studying human behaviour with its additional complicating factors with causal
powers such as mental representations, public representations etc., that make even
more room for possible confusion. Blurring ultimate and proximate explanations can
obscure the evolutionary forces at work. Some authors (West et al., 2008) point out
that when some aspects of social evolutionary theory started to be applied to new
taxa (especially humans), some literature (in our case some literature on human
cooperation and altruism) mixed them inexcusably again. West et al. (2007: 426) use
as an example a strong reciprocity which is defined proximately as a combination of
“a predisposition to reward others for cooperative, norm-abiding behaviours” and
“a propensity to impose sanctions on others for norm violations” (Fehr
& Fischbacher, 2003) and then given as a solution to an ultimate problem: “strong
reciprocity thus constitutes a powerful incentive for cooperation even in non-
repeated interactions when reputation gains are absent” (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).
Problematic in this respect seem to be especially those accounts which propose
that humans have traits that were selected for in the process of human gene-culture
coevolution without them apparently increasing inclusive fitness (I have referred to
those previously as to selfless altruistic traits). But whilst they suggest that these need
to be explained through alternatives like cultural group selection as they are out of
reach of standard evolutionary theory (Bowles et al., 2003), (as “an alternative to
selfish or kin selected explanations of cooperation” (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003);
because they “cannot be justified in terms of self-interest” (Gintis, 2000)), models that
they refer to (Henrich & Boyd, 2001; Bowles et al., 2003; Boyd et al., 2003) still seem to
rely on standard social evolution principles (cooperation providing direct or indirect
fitness benefits to cooperating individuals through increase of group survival (West
et al., 2007: 426)).
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The resulting confusion here lies in failing to argue for human uniqueness 162
at the ultimate level through the uniqueness of proximate mechanisms (sophisticated
punishment and reward systems that can be facultatively fine-tuned in response to
variation in local conditions thanks to human cognitive abilities). In the discussion of
whether cooperation in humans is special, for example, Bowles & Gintis (2004)
suggest a positive answer when they tackle the question “why similar behaviours are
seldom observed in other animals.” Conversely, West et al. (2007: 427) suggest that
punishment has been shown to stabilize cooperation in many cases and “not just
between animals, but also plants and bacteria.”
In its elemental form, EWCE approach does not have the ambition to explain
why our current environment is so different from our ancestral environment and
how it happened. It is rather one of the input conditions not exposed to questioning.
Similarly to, for example, the fact that our ancestral environment must have been
sufficiently stable for a sufficiently long period of time to be able to create the
pressure needed for the development of innate psychological traits. In its
conservative form, the approach works with a form of slow genetic evolution and
innate psychological traits of contemporary humans sees as formed in our ancestral
environment. Therefore, it understands the human cognitive abilities and skills (e.g.
readiness for co-operation in small not-anonymous groups) as having been – in the
primary form – unchanged since the Stone Age (Stone Age mind parallel).163
The basis of EWCE approach is formed by the setting of an individual
(individual organism) that determines them to both an easy production and
absorption of the culture and a group life. A commonly used term in this regard is
the cognitive architecture of the human mind, but it is important to point out that in
162 Again, questions might be raised, in connection to this tendency, about hidden agenda, when we
see funding granted by John Templeton’s Culture, Biology, and Human Uniqueness Initiative.
163 This conservative form is being challenged by various accounts that incorporate effects of culture
on genetic evolution. For a clear mapping of concepts which work with culture as with a significant
factor in genetic evolution, that also introduces its own theory of how selective pressures caused by
the transition to life in big states have amended our psychological setting, and which also raises
a large number of provocative questions, see Cochran & Harpending (2009).
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a broader sense “cognitive” encompasses also (and sometimes even predominantly)
emotional and intuitive constituents.164 This architecture is an outcome of selective
pressures that formed it during the evolutionary history of our species. And here
arises the question: which selective pressures? As I already pointed out in the chapter
dealing with group selection accounts, there exist even purely biological accounts
working with the group selection without leaving the boundaries of genetic
evolution.165 Therefore, also in this part I have to provide space for two competing
views on what formed these traits, either a widely-accepted individual-gene selection
or, in biology marginal, yet in the field of CSR more and more prominent, group
selection.
But is group selection indispensable for the clarification of these group-
favouring traits of individuals? For the improvement of objections against the
concept of group selection which are relevant for EWCE account, it is necessary to
reiterate some points of my criticism. Still, I will try to keep the repetition to
a minimum. The fact that the individual is inclined to work for the good of the group
while enriching himself at the same time is the trait explainable even on the basis of
standard individual-gene selection. Some authors also point out that many models
that depict themselves as group selection are in fact individual selection in the
context of groups. 166 In those cases the difference of both theories is artificial/fictional
and the postulation of the necessity of group selection in them can be rejected as it
will vanish with the removal of terminological/semantic misunderstanding (see
164 This element of broader definition of the “cognition/cognitive” term is characteristic for the entire
CSR and partly even for the entire conglomerate of Cognitive Sciences, thus it differs from a more
specific traditional narrowed meaning of the definition from cognitive psychology.
165 Or in some cases accounts, that do not uphold a clear cut distinction between genetic and cultural
evolution (or between group selection and cultural group selection), as e.g. D. S. Wilson’s (2002).
166 That is, the selective advantage arises at the level of the group, but the unit of inheritance at which
fitness is costed out remains the individual or the gene. Yet as R. I. M. Dunbar points out (2013: 61-62)
the concept of group selection: “should properly be used to refer to an evolutionary process in which
the unit of inheritance (and hence the level at which fitness is costed out) is the group, an not the
individual.” Some elaborate on such a concept specifically, for example, S. Okasha with the term group
heritability (see 2003), but many discussions of group selection muddy the water or fail to make this
distinction clear.
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S. Pinker, 2012; West et al., 2007; West et al., 2008). However, in the remaining cases
(and they form the overall majority) the solution is not that simple and to reach it we
need to get to the problematic core.
No matter how many pro-social psychological traits we manage to find in
humans, no matter how ultra-social they are, and there are many (ranging from
social learning via readiness for complex cooperation, detection of free-riding,
aversion to unjust division, to group loyalty and moral intuitions/emotions), it is not
enough to show that it was the group selection that was responsible for their
formation, because whenever the trait, in the end, benefits the individual or his
relatives, it could have been developed just as well on the basis of standard
individual-gene selection (Inclusive Fitness Theory). The only thing that would be in
need of extra explanation would be if a trait of self-sacrificing/selfless altruism
developed, i.e. the tendency to such a behaviour that would increases the fitness of
the group while reducing the fitness (inclusive fitness; fitness of his genes) of the one
taking the action.
In other words, a pro-social trait with very specific characteristics would have
to be shown, a trait that would benefit the group as a whole regardless of what
detriment it causes to the actor. Only in that way would we get to the factual
difference of both theories, which is, as in the comparison of any other theories, best
apparent on the level of the difference of their predictions.
To prove the existence of such a trait, it is not enough to create a theoretical
possibility (however I consider it important too), it is also necessary to supply
empirical evidence showing how frequent, common, spontaneous this adaptive trait
is, and that there is no need to compensate it anyhow, as with any other adaptive
traits. Then the question is not posed in a way whether the group selection is possible
(in the sense of logical possibility),167 but in a way whether such psychological
167Models convincingly show that its existence is certainly possible, but they remain incapable of
demonstrating how it would manage to achieve any real results in a world where all competitive
evolutionary forces are so much more powerful.
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adaptations truly exist (in the form of innate psychological mechanisms), for which
explanation we would need group selection (which could develop only thanks to
group selection).
As I have already mentioned in the chapter dealing with group selection
accounts, biologists find such traits in social insects which, as it appears, are
endowed with such “spontaneous” inclination towards self-sacrifice. To give up the
ability of its own reproduction or to suicidally fall while defending the colony seems
to come to its members as easily and readily as any other “instinct,” be those finding
the shortest way back home with nourishment, mating or passing on the news about
where the best quality nectar is. These findings lead some authors (E. O. Wilson, D. S.
Wilson, J. Haidt (2012)) to compare these traits to the forms of self-sacrifice we find in
human groups.
But the fact that something looks similar at first sight does not mean that it is
necessarily the same thing. To make this analogy valid and not just a misleading
metaphor, we would need to demonstrate that even in humans are these deeds the
result of inherited psychological trait and thus equally spontaneous. However, as
I have already mentioned, between social insects and our species there is
a fundamental difference on the level of reproduction. The self-sacrificial altruism of
social insects is, from the gene point of view, illusory, because the individual, thanks
to close relationship to the chosen individuals securing the reproduction, in effect
increases fitness of its genes by its deed. In case of our species, it would be a selfless
altruism even from the gene’s point of view (reducing the fitness of genes in one’s
own body and in the body of others while simultaneously increasing the fitness of
the group) that would not be explainable by standard individual-gene selection.
Similar empirical evidence which would show that people irresistibly tend to
give preference to the needs of others prior to their own, that people must try to hold
back not to automatically throw themselves onto the spears of an enemy, as well as
their willingness to hold back to avoid highly caloric food, however, has yet to be
provided. The majority of experimental efforts how to achieve it focuses on various

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behavioural economic games, in which the supporters of group selection try to
demonstrate that people tend to be generous to others even though they play a one-
round game, the games are anonymous and they never meet their counterparts, or
that they tend to punish at their own expenses bad behaviour even when they
themselves cannot profit from the rectification of the wrongdoers. Promoters of
group selection consider these results as examples of such selflessly altruistic trait.
Nevertheless, other studies, originating mainly in the “laboratories” of the
opponents of group selection, show that in the first case, the generosity occurs only
depending on the parallel situational inducement of assumptions/feelings of being
monitored by others (see Hoffman et al., 1994; Haley & Fessler, 2005), of the
possibility of continuous cooperation (see Delton et al., 2011), or of the assessment of
higher profitableness of the chosen behaviour (see Yamagishi & Kiyonari, 2000).
Similarly, in the case of altruistic punishment, it always depends on the assumptions
of improvement of one’s reputation in the eyes of others (see Kurzban et al., 2007), or
of the advantages that the “rectification” of the opponent brings about (see Carpenter
& Matthews, 2012). Eventually, it has been shown that the motivation of punishers
rarely relates to the efforts of protecting the group in the future, but does to the
efforts to restore fairness and compensate victims (see Baumard, 2011).
These results indicate that in the case of anonymous one-round games the
conditions are too artificial/special/extraordinary for the participant to be “truly
processed” and his decision making is dragged by innate psychological traits that
pick up on cues, which are for this type of decision making processes
fundamental/essential/determining, traits which were formed by standard
individual-gene selection. For this reason is this view sometimes referred to as the
Mismatch Hypothesis, as it explains altruistic behaviour in these specific situations as
a mistake/by-product of our heuristic mechanisms, which assess them incorrectly.168
168Its opponents claim that it does not sufficiently explain why human cooperation expanded to its
present extent and intensity in the last 10 000 years, why human cooperation is so different from the
cooperation of other primates who also live in relational groups and repeatedly interact, why the
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Thus, the majority of evolutionary biologists (and also of evolutionary psychologists
together with a significant number of authors, whom could be subsumed under
EWCE approach) are still sceptical when it comes to group selection and they see it
as superfluous,169 as something that, so far, has been unable to produce verifiable
predictions which would not be at the same time generated by the standard
individual-gene selection.170
One of the important objections provided by standard individual-gene
selection such as kin selection or reciprocal altruism against group selection is,
among others, that when dealing with the issue of altruism it is not able to predict
that the altruism of the person should be driven by moral emotions and, at the same
time, closely correlated with reputational monitoring and management.
Concurrently, it is a vital prediction of individual-gene selection, which seems to be
confirmed time and again by empirical data obtained by observation as well as
behavioural experiments. These data suggest that human altruism is “instinctive”
only in relation to one’s own relatives.
degree of cooperation is different in diverse domains of modern society even though costs and
expenses stay the same, why its degree is so substantially different across modern societies or also
why there is the same error rate (triggering of mechanisms of the management of the reputation and
the need/compulsion to punish) related even to the uncooperative behaviour such as ritual rules and
taboos (see Chudek & Henrich, 2010). Alternatively, they point out that the predictions of the
Mismatch Hypothesis is not confirmed when testing in small scale societies where, despite the
expectations, the degree of willingness to punish low offers in Ultimatum Games is very low (see
Henrich et al., 2005).
169 For an illustration of the trend, see collective polemic answer of record-breaking 137 authors
(Abbott at al., 2010) to the article of three authors presenting arguments for the importance of the role
of group selection in the evolution of pro-sociality (Nowak et al., 2010). Both above-mentioned articles
were published in a prestigious journal Nature.
170 This type of argumentation is elaborated e.g. by M. E. Price (2012b). For extended evaluation, see
also West et al. (2008: 380), who criticise also the formal side and remark: “A huge problem in settling
the kin selection vs. group selection debate is that group selection is not properly defined as a concept.
A consequence of this is that there is no formal theory of group selection. Instead, group selection
theory comprises a number of illustrative models, each of limited generality, with obscure or non-
existent links between approaches and formalisms, and some models of group selection contradicting
others.” Or in the same spirit (2008: 380): “If there is an idea of group selection, it does not seem
possible to capture it mathematically, which would put it beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. If
a theory cannot be formally defined, then it is not scientific […].”
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Let us leave aside, for the time being, the fact that the majority of material
interesting for Religious Studies belongs to the field of manipulative dissemination of
false kinship on individuals, with whom we are not blood-related. As it seems, the
majority of religions are able to successfully take advantage of this exact mechanism.
It creates fictitious families of “fathers,” “brothers” and “sisters,” uses metaphors
such as “of one body and blood,” pretends a common origin as well as family
experience and such manipulations171 are successful, because humans have not used
“hard instincts” for distinguishing the relatives for a long time, but instead they use
environmental cues, which we are able to simulate/fake (see S. Pinker, 2012). On the
other hand, altruism to not blood-related individuals develops in humans only under
the conditions of mutual reciprocity, which is from both sides accompanied with
never ceasing monitoring of exploiting tendencies (it is also important to mention -
always present), mostly in the form of continuous (even exaggerated/oversensitive)
controlling of whether we are sufficiently rewarded for our investments. The theory
based on individual-gene selection suppositions thus states that reciprocal altruism is
an integral part of our nature, but it is connected not only to the drivers, but also to
the control mechanisms, both in the form of “instinctive” reactions.
In drivers we should expect moral emotions such as gratitude, compassion or
pity and a driver for maximization (even exaggerated boosting) of the group
preferred/favoured reputation. In control mechanisms to predict moral emotions
related to violations of reciprocity rules such as anger, or automated detection
systems of free-riding (opportunism) and revealing of misleadingly
magnified/exaggerated reputations. Both are again and again supported by an
increasing amount of data from the last fifty years of empirical research.
In contrast, group selection does not create a sufficient amount of pressure on
the development of such control mechanisms. Respectively, it does not itself explain
why these mechanisms should be present and not some others. Especially, when they
Even though I use here the word “manipulation,” I do not claim that it should be an intentional,
171
well thought-out and calculated activity.
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contain, what is from its point of view, counterproductive (self-destructive) effects,
like e.g., benefits for individuals, who manage to profit from false reputation to the
detriment of the good of the group. When taking group selection to its extreme
position, the group should trigger automatic tendencies in people to sacrifice their
own good for the group’s benefit, to work on its enrichment whatever the sacrifices,
and the mechanism responsible for strong emotional responses of people in moments
they find out that they have been exploited should not have a reason to arise.
After the general analysis of EWCE approach to the study of culture and after
analysing the objections against those of its forms that work with the concept of
group selection, I will more specifically introduce how this approach looks like while
being applied to the study of religion.
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EWCE Approach in Religious Studies
EWCE approach to the study of religion, still mostly dominated by evolutionary
psychology of religion, manifests itself in the field of Religious Studies (through
today’s CSR) mostly in theories which combine the coevolution without autonomous
cultural evolution (evolution through culture) and the reservation in regards to group
selection efficiency.172 They also oppose strong adaptationist program, thus treating
religion as a by-product of evolution.173
Before I focus in more detail on what it actually means to consider religion as
a by-product of evolution, I will try to present most precisely and concisely (quoting
one source at maximum) some of the leading authors and some of the most profound
hypotheses which the EWCE approach to study of religion consists of.
When looking at the classics, we have to start in early nineties where E. T.
Lawson and R. N. McCauley (1990) brought cognitive revolution into Religious
Studies when they asserted that ritual features prey on our universal action
representation systems. Also J. Tooby and L. Cosmides (1992) start with the
promotion of evolutionary psychology’s all-inspiring concept of module, now
commonly used to describe a pattern of heritable behaviour aimed at solving
a particular problem of survival in the evolutionary past. Pioneering work of S. E.
Guthrie (1993) appears and with it the idea that beliefs in supernatural entities sprout
out of our tendency to overly anthropomorphize surroundings (which is a result of
naturally selected hyperactive vigilance). Correspondingly, L. Hirchfeld and
S. Gelman (1994) served back then as an inspiration for the transfer of domain-
172 Some authors are exceptions to this rule, e.g. L. A. Kirkpatrick who embraces both (see Kirkpatrick,
2008: 65), S. Atran who joined forces with J. Henrich to depict a more complete picture of evolution of
religion (see Atran & Henrich, 2010) and A. Norenzayan who started utilizing cultural group selection
(see Norenzayan, 2013).
173 How strong this position is in comparison to others in the current CSR can be seen also in J. S.
Jensen’s designation when he describes the work of its two prominent theorists P. Boyer and
I. Pyysiäinen (Jensen, 2009: 129): “I call their version of the cognitive science of religion the ‘standard
cognitive science of religion model’ as it has so far been the dominant model.”
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specificity into the domain of cognition and culture. If we stop at the beginnings, we
must mention D. Sperber (1996) developing the concept of mental representations
and cultural epidemiology (cultural transmission causes, in the actual domain of any
cognitive module, a proliferation of parasitic information that mimics the module’s
proper domain).174
Another advancement comes at the turn of the millennium when P. Boyer
(2001) developed the idea that cognitive salience of concepts violating intuitive
ontological categories, makes beings with special powers more attention grabbing,
memorable and transmittable. Ontological categories rise up from psychological
mechanisms otherwise evolved for understanding natural world like folk physics or
folk biology. This idea was then taken over by remarkable systematisers:
I. Pyysiäinen (2003), S. Atran (2002) and A. Norenzayan (Atran & Norenzayan,
2004)175.
J. Barrett (1998)176 and D. J. Slone (2004) elaborate another hypothesis that real-
time people employ “theologically incorrect” beliefs imposing anthropomorphic
limits on deities which is again a consequence of our hyperactive agency detection
device (HADD). S. Pinker (1997 and 2004) sees religious emotions as possible
174 Seminal work of D. Sperber (1996) may be considered as one of the milestones in bringing forward
a naturalistic programme to the social sciences in general. Naturalism is meant to bridge gaps between
sciences, allowing enrichment of both ends (not to neglect lower-level mechanisms as well as no to
pay attention to lower-level mechanisms only) and not to aim at a universal reduction. The ideal
shared by CSR research programmes includes developing mechanistic and naturalistic explanations of
cultural phenomena. Mechanistic in this sense meaning analysing “a complex causal relationship as
an articulation of more elementary causal relationships” (1996: 98). Naturalistic meaning “that there is
good ground to assume that these more elementary relationships could themselves be further
analysed mechanistically down to some level of description at which their natural character would be
wholly unproblematic” (1996: 98).
175 In this article, A. Norenzayan openly opposes the adaptationist approach and claims that religion is
a “converging by-product of several cognitive and emotional mechanisms that evolved for mundane
adaptive tasks” (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004: 714). His later and more detailed position has been
already presented in the Big Gods Hypothesis (see chapter “Dual Inheritance Accounts”). In that
account, Norenzayan combines the strong by-productivist position (where he sees religion as
a cultural by-product which solves adaptive problem of cooperation in large groups) with the cultural
evolutionary approach (in which he utilizes cultural group selection which formed religion to
a “secondary adaptation” for collective action and in the course of history made some of them more
successful than others).
176 Work based on his previous research conducted with colleagues (see Barrett & Keil, 1996).
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extensions of our emotional adaptations such as desire for health, love and success.
In addition, L. A. Kirkpatrick (2005) states that one part of (a multiple by-product)
religion consists of by-product of evolved social-cognitive mechanisms for
negotiating specific, functionally distinct types of relationships such as attachment
(gods being substitute attachment figures), kinship, social exchange, coalitions, and
dominance hierarchies.177
D. Kelemen (2004) concludes that predisposition towards teleological
reasoning increases attractiveness of creationism and P. Bloom (2004) claims that
children are natural born mind-body dualists and creationists. In his theory, even H.
Whitehouse (2004) supports this by-productivistic approach by stating there are
aspects of religion constituting cognitively optimal beliefs, which is the most basic
way of acquiring and transmitting religion out of which imagistic and doctrinal
modes emerged.
Nevertheless, EWCE approach to the study of religion includes even purely
adaptationist individualistic theories arguing that at least some parts of religion
evolved by natural selection and that they contribute to inclusive fitness. 178 These
theories often work with the concept (and its analogies) presented by R. D.
Alexander (1987), in which indirect reciprocal altruism between helper and third
parties works through improved reputation. Yet adaptationist theories make their
appearance little later on than the by-productivistic ones.
177 For this multiple by-products perspective based on J. Bowlby’s classic Attachment Theory was used
to explain certain religious beliefs and behaviours (seeing many of those as generalizations or
extensions of the parent-child bond rendering nurturance and protection). See Kirkpatrick (2006) for
an extended argument as to why the author does not consider religion as a precise, economical, and/or
reliable solution to any particular problem and thus not suited to any adaptive task.
178 This sort of adaptationism is not based on group selection argument - it does not need it in its
elemental form and it does not work in it with autonomous cultural evolution. Nevertheless, that does
not mean that it is in all its forms antagonistic towards these two concepts. On the contrary, to
describe the positions of its authors we would again need a spectrum with two extremes, from open
disagreement with one, the other or both, presenting itself in feisty critiques, or reserved distance
(definitely not in the extreme, but still due to their negative stance towards group selection, this side
could include R. Sosis or J. Dow), to explicit agreement with one, other or both concepts manifesting
itself most often by the tendency to relate or achieve compatibility of their own theories with these
approaches, treating them as supplementary or expanding (W. Irons, D. Johnson, or J. Bulbulia).
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Amongst the pioneers, we should not forget W. Irons (2001) who developed
the hypothesis that religious behaviour is in its core both a hard-to-fake sign of
commitment (also sometimes referred to as “Commitment Theory”)179 and
a commitment device; one of the leading representatives of this approach, R. Sosis
(2003) sees religious rituals as costly signals of commitment advantageous to
individual fitness (also known as “Costly Signalling Theory”).180 Another
representative, J. Bulbulia (2004) presents hypothesis that hard-to-fake religious
behaviour functions adaptively as a reliable signal of solidarity (also known as
“Commitment-Signalling Theory”).181
Among other leading thinkers, I must mention J. Bering (2011) who claims that
beliefs in afterlife are grounded in people’s basic inability to mentally represent
a permanent state of non-consciousness (extension of Theory of Mind182 which might
179 Basically an elaborate version of the original Zahavi’s handicap principle (see 1975; for extended
and updated version see Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997), developed for the study of non-human animal
behaviour, that offers an explanation of why traits that seem to be disadvantageous at first sight
(peacock’s tail, stotting in gazelles) are not and how they might have been selected for. A. Zahavi’s
theory connects such “handicapping” traits to a demonstration of quality that attracts mating partners
as it signals that only a very fit animal would be able to avoid predation in spite of them.
180 An elaborated and improved version of the hard-to-fake sign argument which builds upon Iron’s
hypothesis. R. Sosis’ theory is enhanced by at least two other factors: (a) psychological effects of
performing rituals - merely taking part in ritual stimulates belief (through mechanisms suggested
either by Self-Perception Theory, (for full argument see Bem, 1972); or by Cognitive Dissonance
Theory, (for full argument see Festinger, 1964), and (b) alterations in perception - contrary to non-
believers, believers perceive costs of rituals as lesser while simultaneously exaggerating their benefits
(see Sosis, 2003). Moreover, religious constructs constitute memorable and emotionally evocative
primes, they are associationally conditioned and trigger neuroendocrine responses that further
motivate religious behaviour (see Sosis & Alcorta, 2004). Another aspect of costly signalling is that it is
also a protective strategy to avoid the free-rider problem (free riders will be deterred by the high cost
of entering the group).
181 In fact the theory does not require signals to be costly, only to be hard-to-fake (Bulbulia, 2008a: 153).
The theory also constitutes a fundamental building block in a much broader conceptual evolutionary
model of religion called “Religious Niche Construction” (see Bulbulia, 2008b) within which it offers
a solution to the question “how could religious altruism evolve?”. The answer to that question lies in
the supply of access to clear, unambiguous and hard-to-fake signals of religious commitment without
which defectors and free riders would always doom proto-religionists to failure. Niche Constructivist
model in general, places a special emphasis on the capacity of organisms to modify sources of natural
selection in their environment, thus giving phenotypes much more active role in evolution than
generally conceived (see Laland et al., 2000).
182 Theory of Mind (ToM) module as well as previously mentioned Hypersensitive/Hyperactive
Agency/Agent Detection Device (HADD) are both extensively used in backing up many of the general
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be also interpreted as by-productivist argument even though J. Bering argues that
tendency to infer agentic intent in natural events might have served an ancestrally
adaptive function). It is because the idea of a supernatural agent who punishes
selfish behaviours makes people inhibit such behaviours thus promoting their
prosocial reputations among actual people (which is gene-enhancing-reputational-
management adaptationist argument). A similar argument (sometimes referred to as
“Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis”) was developed by D. Johnson (2005). A J.
Dow (2008) employs simulations of such social selection process183 that can select
a desire to communicate beliefs in a non-verifiable reality alongside of
communication with obvious survival functions, for which he needs to postulate
a condition that non-believers would be attracted to religious people.
On the scale of these two imagined extremes (by-product vs. adaptation),
there exists also a vast group of theories which follow the golden mean. For example,
a by-product can be adaptive or maladaptive given the situation and context, or an
adaptation which becomes maladaptive in modern environment and so on. But what
exactly does the statement that religion is a by-product of evolution mean? It means
that scientists do not consider it to be an adaptation which was during a certain
period of our evolutionary history selected for as it provided its bearers with
arguments that our brains really are evolved to deal with challenges in our social world or that social
interaction is an important force in our cognitive evolution (see Dunbar, 1998; 2003 or Sterelny, 2003).
183 Defined as a social behaviour impacting individual fitness (see Fisher, 2006). For example, sexual
selection which produces behaviour that is related to success in mating is one type of social selection.
Sexual selection accounts are usually based on costly signalling or are at least highly compatible with
the theory (along the lines of advertising fitness rather than promoting group solidarity). It basically
states that religious behaviour might have been in part selected for as a sign of good overall conditions
(good genes) or capability (or willingness) to invest resources in the care of the offspring. For example,
ritualization results from sexual selection of signals and displays to optimally excite the perceptual
systems of receivers (reason why courtship is typified by ritual action). As such, complex cultural
ceremonies can then be considered to be the consequences of male display arms race. If this is so,
religious practices should be like all sexually selected traits: widespread, adopted in puberty
(initiation rites), male-dominated (women mostly as “audience”), costly and species-specific. Sexual
selection theory is also a good example (or reminder) that even categories dividing approaches into
the by-productivists vs. adaptationists are not impassable. Some authors combine both and to classify
them into one or the other group would mean forced neglecting of one part of their work. For
example, both I. Pyysiäinen (2008) and D. J. Slone (2008) support the hypothesis, despite of the fact
that they so far, by and large, contributed mainly to building standard by-productivist CSR model.
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a selective advantage compared to those without it. On the contrary, they see it as
a by-product of other adaptations (usually a couple of them and in different
combinations) which evolved to solve other problems we were confronted with in
our ancestral environment.
Within the EWCE approach, both by-productivists and adaptationists
acknowledge the same type of argumentation. That is to say, if we want to explain
any trait,184 even a trait of Homo sapiens being so prone to religious belief and
behaviour, we have, in principle, three possibilities: (1) a product of neo-Darwinian
natural selection, i.e., an adaptation, (2) a by-product of adaptations (which can be
further divided according to the criterion if it enhances biological fitness or not; if it
does, it is called exaptation, subcategories of which are preadaptation or spandrel 185)
or lastly (3) a genetic drift. As S. Pinker (2004) states: “Random stuff happens in
evolution. Certain traits can become fixed through sheer luck of the draw.”
By-productivists are just not convinced that it would be possible to fulfil all
the necessary conditions186 to convincingly proclaim religion as an adaptation,187
184 By-productivists as well as adaptationists study traits, that is, universal propensities toward
something. Trait is the fundamental appropriate unit of study for this level of evolutionary analysis
and behaviours and cognitive processes can be analysed as traits (see Andrews et al., 2002).
185 Person most responsible for promotion of concepts exaptation and spandrel not only in
evolutionary biology but also in other fields is S. J. Gould (see Gould, 1991 and 1997b). He borrowed
the term spandrel from architecture where it most commonly defines the inevitable irregular triangular
space which gets created between the curve of an arch and the inclosing right angle (usually when
two arches are placed to each other).
186 For a trait to be an adaptation it must be innate and must develop reliably across a range of
environments and be universal across the species. Causal effects of a trait must also, on average,
improve the survival or reproduction of the bearer in evolutionarily relevant environment. Finally and
crucially, the advantage must be demonstrable by some independently motivated causal
consequences of the adaptation in question. As S. Pinker puts it (2004): “That is, the laws of physics or
chemistry or engineering have to be sufficient to establish that the trait would be useful. The
usefulness of the trait can’t be invented ad hoc.” G. C. Williams in his classic work (1966) argued that
adaptation can be recognized as such only when there is a clear evidence of a “special design” to solve
the adaptive task with a reasonable level of efficiency, reliability, economy and precision. His point
however is of course hard to quantify.
187 This point holds yet another dimension of the problem. If we by the definition and decompose
religion to its constituent core elements, we can pose the question “Is religion an adaptation?” not in
one, but in two ways. (1) We can state that one element is crucial and others, less significant elements
just “bundle up” on it. The question is then – is this crucial element a direct adaptation, and we can
put the “rest” of the elements aside for the time being as they are not important in answering the
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which says nothing about it being in some cases and moments adaptive. 188 According
to them, religion is a by-product of our emotional and cognitive predispositions
evolved for other purposes (e.g., Theory of Mind module etc.), similar to the red
colour of blood being a by-product of the chemistry of haemoglobin carrying oxygen.
The capacity of haemoglobin to carry oxygen is an adaptation. The colour of
haemoglobin when carrying oxygen is not and was not per se selected for. Similarly
to this case, there is no need for other adaptive explanations of religion either. Other
question “is religion an adaptation?”. In this case, we consider each element as a separate trait.
Religion is an adaptation because its core trait is an adaptation (e.g., a belief in supernatural agents).
(2) We can assume that religion’s constituent core elements when put together form a proper trait in
its own right. This coalescence of cognitive, emotional, and behavioural elements is what selection has
operated on, resulting in religion being an adaptation (or more precisely - a religious system being an
adaptive system). In this case we can overlook to what purpose and how these elements served (if
ever) when they functioned separately. In short, there are three possibilities: either it is an adaptation
consisting of adaptations, an adaptation consisting of by-products or an adaptation consisting both of
adaptations and of by-products. Overall however, it has to be noted that in both cases we assume that
core elements did not evolve together. Some of them (e.g., ritual) have much deeper evolutionary
history than others, but at some point in our evolutionary history they started to regularly coalesce.
Neither approach also claim that it would be worthless to study religion’s constituent core elements
individually (and when possible in separation) which is the way used mostly by by-productivists.
Adaptationists mostly make use of a different approach saying that this procedure lacks space for
a complex “secondary adaptation.” My generalization that by-productivists are not convinced that
religion could be classified as an adaptation which I use in the text, would mean the same thing as if
I reformulated it by saying that by-productivists are not convinced that religion could be treated as an
autonomous trait. Similar classification relating to the primary isolated functions of core elements of
religion exists in theory even in the by-productivistic accounts. It can either be a by-product consisting
of adaptations, a by-product consisting of by-products, or by-product consisting of adaptations and of
by-products. Nevertheless, in their case the usefulness of the classification is weakened by the fact that
by-productivists, as opposed to the adaptationists, all denounce analysing religion on this level as
a functional unit/complete behavioural complex. Thus, they frequently refuse to make statements
based on uniformity of some aggregate. As a result we much more often see proclamations/titles such
as “Religion as an adaptation/Religion is an adaptation,” or “Religion is not an adaptation,” rather
than proclamations/titles saying “Religion as a by-product/Religion is a by-product,” unless they want
to make the point on a bit different level – that of religion not being “a natural kind” and notoriously
hard to define as such. However, because in reality it’s very difficult to talk about something without
being able to refer to it in singular, this model will serve also as an abstract meta-analytical tool for
classification of by-productivist theories.
188 There is a big difference between the terms adaptive and adaptation. To say that something is
adaptive (bringing reproductive benefits to its bearer in a particular environment) does not necessarily
mean that it is an adaptation and also adaptation itself might become maladaptive in environment
different from which it evolved in. As are “adaptive” and “adaptation” two distinct concepts, so are
“is religion adaptive?” and “is religion an adaptation?” two distinct questions. Adding to the
confusion is the double meaning of the term adaptation itself which refers both to the process of
phenotypic modification by natural selection as well as the end result this process.
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analogous cases where the adaptive function is not clear are for example humour,
music, the ability to read etc.
By-productivistic concepts typically make an effort to begin the study of
religion by examining evolved architectural features of the human mind discovered
independently from religion and subsequently inquiring how these could have
contributed to the evolution of religious behaviour. The reverse way of approaching
it is more characteristic of adaptationist theories. Adaptationist theories typically
start from cross-culturally recurrent features of religions, subsequently infer on their
fitness consequences, and then reconstruct situations and environments in which
they could have evolved from.189 All this in an effort to find the one (most important,
underlying, evolutionary) reason for its existence (e.g., the promotion of in-group
pro-sociality and cooperation).
This difference in the approach can also cause pressure on the dichotomy of
origins vs. origin of religion,190 because even if we go around the fact that every
educated evolutionary account of origins and evolution of religion (be it
adaptationist or by-productivist), considers religion a complex composed
heterogeneous category (an origin in natural language use; consisting of many
building blocks/constituent parts etc.), and abandons it in favour of researching some
of its elements (religious behaviour; ritualized behaviour; religious beliefs) which
evolved by degrees and in different periods, there still is a difference between the
various theories. They either stress the “randomness” of the link between these
elements (meaning they assembled together at certain point just because they could,
with no specific reason behind it) or they endeavour to discover the main reason
behind this link (which would reveal the core feature of religion, to which all other
features are mostly subordinate, whatever their role is for the aggregate). In the first
189 For more see the footnote in the “Conclusion” of this thesis about formation of research programme
in the evolutionary study of culture/religion.
190 I use this dichotomy only figuratively as a description of differences in research approaches
(description of different tendency, motivations, procedures in research programmes), and it is not to

be taken literally.
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scenario, the interest is focused more on parts in their individuality whereas in the
second it is more focused on the linkage and the functionality of the whole.191
By presenting the leading authors and the most influential hypotheses of
EWCE approach to the study of religion, by creating their typology when dividing
them into two main groups according to whether they see religion as an evolutionary
adaptation or as a by-product of evolutionary adaptations, and by subsequently
analysing basic differences in suppositions of these two groups, I have reached not
only the end of the section presenting this alternative of evolutionary study of
culture (and more precisely religion), but also the end of my entire dissertation. Thus
follows a detailed summary of my main conclusions.
191From the position of the adaptationist programme is this idea aptly expressed by R. Sosis (2009:
322): “But even if the cognitivist assesment is accurate and, for example, supernatural belief is a by-
product of HADD, this would tell us nothing about whether or not the religious system is an
adaptation. All adaptive systems consist of constituent parts. […] For instance, to evaluate whether the
human respiratory system is an adaptation to mediate the movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide in
and out of the body, a detailed analysis of the larynx would be important, but insufficient to reveal the
selective pressures that ultimately shaped the respiratory system.”
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CONCLUSION
The fact that the evolutionary theory is again taken seriously in the scientific study of
religion is a major benefit for Religious Studies. However, it is not riskless, as there
are a large number of evolutionary approaches and some of them have their dark
side, with which Religious Studies has a vast historic experience. The principles of
evolutionary theory formed the basis for the first major scientific theories of religion
including of those authors whom we are willing to see as founding fathers of our
discipline. However, the force with which the evolutionary theory spilled over into
their worldviews and codetermined their value-systems backfired and devalued the
purity of their scientific efforts. In many cases, in the view of later critics, these
authors discredited their theories by not being able to discern between the factual
side and ideological overlaps of evolutionary theory. They saw them as being one,
which, in return, compromised their potential factual contribution.
Therefore, it is understandable that many scholars of religion experience
a natural defence reaction in contact with the approach propagating the evolutionary
study of religion. Nevertheless, it would be a pity if this reaction was allergic in its
extent, i.e., in the sense of the malfunction of the autoimmune system, exaggerated.
In such moments, under the best of conditions, it blindly condemns the whole
approach for its wrong parts, and under the worst of conditions, condemns the
whole for the wrong parts which it actually does not even contain; and all without
attending to a thorough analysis, which could help in avoiding similar simplifying
rash conclusions.
This type of analysis is the main theme of the present work. One of the
preliminary conclusions may be the fact that only a few of the new applications of
darwinistic evolutionary theories on religion repeat ideological mistakes of the past.
It is caused not only by prior elimination of those applications which would repeat
them and that I would have to a priori discard many candidates. It is, more likely,
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caused by the fact that modern analogues of such biased theories are scarce in the
scientific field. It is, in a certain respect, encouraging, because many of the authors
working with evolutionary theories of religion are not primarily recruited from social
sciences, which one would expect to be sufficiently instructed by the history of their
respective fields. Among the fundamental mistakes of classical cultural evolutionism,
I classify primarily the linking of evolutionary processes with value-based concepts
of progress. I also include the merging of evolution with teleology, the “just-so
stories,” prescribing evolution as rigid unilinearity or linking evolutionary processes
with the development of individual personality.
Yet there is one point which is common for both classical and modern
Darwinian cultural evolutionism, and as I showed in my work, even this point can be
regarded as ideological. I mean the philosophical position of Universal Darwinism
(from Generalized Darwinism to Darwinian monism), which the theories use for
legitimation of the fact that their treatises are in fact evolutionary. The legitimization
technique consists in claiming that what is Darwinian, is pure scientific evolutionism
(contrary to only undetermined evolutionism, i.e. also progressivism) and that this
pure scientific character is transferred to any other treatise transferring Darwinian
principles to non-biological domains. Because that is what Darwin himself did, the
width and uncertainty of his original principles enables it.
In this case, it is already a metaphysical position working with Darwinism in
its original form, as if it were a meta-framework, which could be used (while
respecting certain conditions) for explanations at all other levels of reality.192 It is
192 As if in those levels exist an inherent order of things subservient to these principles and this
inherent order was the same for all life as well as for other open systems, wherever they could be in
the universe. It is actually an unoriginal type of ideal, that there exists an all-encompassing
evolutionary principle to which phenomena of all levels and kinds abide if you keep certain
conditions equal. However, such a belief accompanied even pre-Darwinian evolutionary accounts
(although in the Darwinian shape it is not connected to the concept of progress). Explaining even
biological level of phenomena as being guided by this all-encompassing evolutionary principle should
be in fact just a necessary logical consequence of the suppositions of such an ideal. The biological level
of phenomena should have neither special status nor a special position in the explanatory process.
What is original and ideologically “new” on this ideal is brought forward by the exceptional success
Darwin’s theory achieved when explaining biological phenomena. That is to say that this success
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a conviction which is legitimate to the extent in which it stays within its proper
limits, i.e., in the field of metaphysical reflections of the authors and it does not act as
their motivation for their efforts to show at whatever cost what it is possible to apply
the principles of Darwinian evolution to in the realms of science. 193 However, if
someone does not share this philosophical position, the legitimizing technique which
sprouts from it is rendered useless. The only thing out of the “pure scientific
character” of Darwinian evolution that we are left with for assessment of the “pure
scientific character” of accounts which transfer Darwinian principles into non-
biological domains, is the functional, i.e., current biological neo-Darwinian form
which clarifies or abandons many of Darwin’s original principles. Therefore, I have
chosen this functional form as a coin of the realm for my critical analysis.
Even though the value-based ideological content is the biggest problem, it is
not the only problematic aspect of applying evolutionary theory to the explanation of
religion. Even after we make sure that our efforts to transfer this theory from its
original domain (organic speciation) do not bear marks of value-based distortion of
turns the originally marginal standing of the biological level of phenomena, puts it into the spotlight
and makes it the fundamental and most important level of all. Now as it acts as a default level,
a starting point, it acts also as an inspirational source to all other sciences or to whole synthetizing
efforts.
193 Perhaps the best known and the most prominent proponent of this theory is D. C. Dennett. Honest
scientists and honest philosophers should not have a big problem with distinguishing scientific parts
of theories from its philosophical overlaps (or assumptions). However, some scientistic philosophers
(and scientists crossing into philosophy) unfortunately are unable or unwilling to do so. When it
comes to big names like D. C. Dennett, it can either contaminate the discipline or at least throw it in
a bad light (see Geertz, 2008). His opponents at times accuse him that his philosophy does not amount
to much more than dogmatic biology. For example, L. Wieseltier, in The God Genome review of
Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, describes his “explanation” of
religion with these words: “Dennett is extrapolating back to human prehistory with the aid of
biological thinking, nothing more. Breaking the Spell is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology. There
is no scientific foundation for its scientistic narrative…what he has written is just an extravagant
speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.”
Dennett’s doctrine is biological reductionism par excellence, and this fact does not change his
assurances, similar to so many other assurances of other biological reductionists, that it is not so. He
claims that man is an animal that can exceed his animality (2006): “But we also have creeds, and the
ability to transcend our genetic imperatives. This fact does make us different.” But with the same
breath adds: “But it is itself a biological fact, visible to natural science, and something that requires an
explanation from natural science.” This effectively makes no fact about humans independent from
biology and flattens previous “transcendence of genetic imperatives” once again back into a fact of
biology.
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science, we still have to determine whether this transition was done appropriately
(i.e., whether it honoured all the rules for transferring theory from one domain to
another, from between levels of complexity and from between disciplines). Were all
the principles of neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection adhered to
so that it still is the same theory? Is the concept of evolution in the transfer useful or
rather confusing and misleading?
For the critical assessment of the strong and weak points of the different ways
of using evolutionary theory for explaining religious phenomena, the need gradually
emerged to mutually relate one to another. Thus, another result of my thesis is their
tentative typology. First level classification is based on whether they are or are not
ideologically biased. These classes, roughly speaking, overlap with the distinction of
classical cultural evolutionism and contemporary cultural evolutionism (the latter
together with the EWCE approach to the study of culture). Second level classification
is determined by the criterion of using cultural evolution in the sense of the evolution
of culture (i.e., the genuine autonomous cumulative process of the evolution of
culture). This excludes as special those accounts I label as the EWCE approach as
a distinct way of applying evolutionary theory to explanations of culture.
EWCE accounts emphasize the biological/genetic neo-Darwinian evolution of
our species which affects how people function in all domains of their endeavour.
Thus it is worth asking, when and in what conditions the religion started to form and
to try to discover the innate psychological mechanisms of our current stone-age
minds that shaped our religious beliefs and behaviour in the past, as they do so even
today.194 This line of thought is, from a certain perspective, the safest and most
194D.S. Wilson considers this view too narrowing and he deliberately puts a distance between himself
and this view in his work Darwin’s cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. He does so to
lay out the possibility for constructing his extended view of human evolution which apparently
includes autonomous sociocultural evolutionary processes. To critically capture the “narrowing”
view, he uses these words (Wilson, 2002: 36): “The best we can do is try to understand how the stone-
age mind is likely to react to the strange new world for which it is not prepared.” I consider it a rather
accurate evaluation of the classical evolutionary psychology approach and I fully concur, the only
difference being that I do not think these should be words of criticism or condemnation. On the
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conservative because in itself it does not demand that the principles of neo-
Darwinian evolution should be applicable even outside the biological (genetic)
domain. Although sociocultural phenomena are, as products of evolutionarily
evolved minds, dependent on the results of biological evolution, it does not claim
that their “life” should be subjected to the same principles. In my opinion, it is this
line of thought which holds the biggest “newly discovered” contribution of
evolutionary theory for the scientific study of religion. This contribution is not
burdened with any formerly mentioned ideological problems, nor is it exposed to the
previously discussed mistakes stemming from the imperfect transmission of
principles from the biological domain to a cultural one.
In the case of evolution of culture accounts, it is expected that there is a real
cultural evolution, where ideas, institutions and parts of cultures or even whole
cultures are undertaking processes that are genuinely evolutionary. This is why their
variation, selection and retention are going to be better explained when using neo-
Darwinian natural selection.
I see this division as useful not only because it holds separate two essentially
different things, but also because it helps in detecting them in scenarios, when they
remain mixed. One of the cases when this shedding-light ability shows its usefulness,
is when this difference is intentionally diminished. Some authors state openly that
the traits they talk about are cultural. Some authors claim that they are agnostic
about whether these traits are genetic or cultural. Yet some try to blur the difference
in an effort to legitimize and to put in better light traditionally unacknowledged
cultural evolution by bonding it with a highly successful and credible model of
genetic evolution.195
contrary, I see it as a realistic assessment of our capabilities/options which could form the foundations
for establishing a strong and progressive research programme.
195 Among authors which can be especially unclear in separating biological and cultural evolution,
who work with many models which they relate to a different extent to each other, who overlay them
and thus make it needlessly hard to interpret some of their opinions, I include, as an example, D. S.
Wilson (2002). This is supported, by the fact, that A. Norenzayan and A. F. Shariff in their Science
review article (2008: 58) about the origin and evolution of religious prosociality, classed his theory
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In the second case, it helps with the identification of another misinterpretation
which currently appears: namely calling as “cultural evolution” evolution through
culture. However, evolution through culture in principle is just genetic evolution
which takes seriously the feedback loop between biology and culture. 196 In other
words, it does not claim, that there should be a process of genuine evolution of
culture, but that evolution (i.e., genetic evolution) is largely influenced by culture
(evolution through culture), because culture and cultural change (even though in
itself not subjected to Darwinian principles) has sufficiently powerful means to have
an impact on our genetic evolution. However, recognising that the gene can act on
culture and that culture can act retroactively on the gene, does not mean recognising
that cultural phenomena should be necessarily subject to the same evolutionary
processes as biological phenomena. It only requires recognition of the complexity
and interconnectedness of both processes, each of which remains autonomous and
governed by its own principles and laws.
The EWCE approach to the study of culture (including the concept of evolution
through culture) I see as the most promising and it is because of this approach I claim
that taking evolutionary theory seriously again within the scientific study of religion
is a huge benefit for Religious Studies. However, when the contribution of theories of
evolution of culture is concerned, my conclusion about the benefits of these efforts is
much more sceptical. I do not claim that any application of biological principles
(methods) is not a priori possible or useful in the domain of sociocultural phenomena;
i.e., that there exist previously known facts that could prevent a similar application
or condemn it to failure before it even started. On the contrary, I see as clearly
both as adaptationism – which works with maximisation of genetic fitness, and as cultural group
selection – which works with the evolution of culture and has as a point of departure the by-
productivist account.
196 That is to use the term cultural evolution confusingly for what is in biological/genetic evolution the
long studied and well known Baldwin effect (Baldwin, 1896). The Baldwin effect explains how
intelligent behaviour, improved learning or better imitation, all have their impact on natural selection
through the selective advantage they bring to a given organism at a given time and place for their
survival and reproduction. All in perfectly Darwinian fashion with no Lamarckian inheritance
needed.
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beneficial the fact, that similar prejudices are being gradually removed and that
thanks to this effort it is again possible to open up in all seriousness the debate on the
forms, the possibilities and the boundaries of such applications on a factual level.
However, some applications are better than others and some suffer from serious
deficiencies, as do for example applications of neo-Darwinian natural selection on the
study of cultural change (or whatever we decide to call this process – cultural
change/development/history).
If I were to express my conclusions in another way, I would choose the
following words. Using evolution to explain religion (more precisely religious
behaviour) takes three basic forms, two of which I consider to be discredited or
scientifically unsatisfactory/unsustainable, and one, on the other hand, to be very
rewarding and inspiring. The first is the form of progressivist models, whether
classical or modern, which combine evolution with value-clogged normative criteria
of progress (often complemented by teleology or another, nowadays indefensible,
concepts). In current CSR they are virtually non-existent.
The second is the form that does not suffer from the ideological shortcomings
of the first, but carries, in its reliance on the concept of Darwinian evolution,
problems stemming from the legitimizing technique associated with the
philosophical position of Universal Darwinism,197 and that fails to meet the criteria of
the neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection. When transferred to the socio-cultural
domain, it is, despite all its wishes, just a poor metaphor or a vague and misleading
analogy which adds nothing to the traditional historical causal explanations. It enters
CSR in the form of theories of evolution of religious groups, such as D. S. Wilson’s
group selection account (2002) or even in the form of the evolution of religion itself,
such as memetics (Dawkins, 1976; Blackmore, 1999; Dennett, 2006) or Dual
Inheritance Theory/cultural group selection (Richerson & Boyd, 2005; Henrich, 2009;
197For some authors, these are not only the problems arising from legitimizing techniques, but also
their philosophical inferences and forays into world-view positions, which they are trying to pass off
as scientific (e.g., the atheistic agitations of D. C. Dennett and R. Dawkins).
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Norenyazan, 2013). Both the progressivist, and the second form, in which it comes to
theory of genuine cultural evolution in the sense of evolution of culture, I see, due to
previously mentioned reasons, as misleading, and I cannot but agree with S. J.
Gould’s pleading (1996: 219-220): “I do wish that the term ‘cultural evolution’ would
drop from use.”
The third form, the EWCE approach (including back loop cultural
pressures/evolution through culture), utilizes standard neo-Darwinian individual-
gene selection to generate testable hypotheses about the architecture of the human
mind acquired during the evolutionary history of our species. Based on the innate
psychological traits (mostly adaptive in nature) it can in turn generate hypotheses
about forms/patterns/regularities of human behaviour (religious behaviour is just
one of the natural kinds of human behaviour) and thus to create, within the scientific
study of religion, new promising progressive research programmes198
complementing and enriching the traditional approaches in Religious Studies.
This form is suitable for balancing out traditional historical approaches in that
it focuses our attention on an otherwise poorly available (and I hope historians will
198In these programmes the usual common denominator is applying the same strategy utilized by any
other evolutionary behavioural scientist – i.e., to uncover mental capacities and behaviours involved
universally in certain type of thought and behaviour (in our case defined as “religious”) and then try
to seek plausible selective pressures that might relate to them (in other words, measure the
contributions of various types of this behaviour to fitness). For example, P. Boyer and B. Bergstrom
identify more thoroughly a common strategy of the evolutionary anthropology of religion in the
following way (2008: 114): “A common strategy in the field consists in (a) identifying specific adaptive
challenges encountered by Homo in its ancestral conditions of evolutionary adaptations; (b) specifying
information-processing mechanisms that could meet these challenges and accrue fitness benefits – on
the basis of what is independently established in experimental psychology, neuroscience, etc.;
(c) designing new experimental protocols to establish or disconfirm the existence of these specific
information-processing mechanisms; (d) specifying the kind of concepts and norms that would be
widespread among humans, if these mechanisms operated as theoretically expected; and (e) testing
the latter prediction against the ethnographic record from scientific publications or databases.” This
process can proceed in two ways, either to start from the cross-culturally recurrent features of
religious behaviour and then infer what their impact is on fitness, and what evolutionary processes
may have led to these features, or to start from developed psychological tendencies and subsequently
show how they could have led to religious behaviour. The first of them is more dangerous as it runs
the risk of becoming “just-so stories” (unfalsifiability) and is typical rather for the approach of early
sociobiology (Wilson, 1975). The second one is closer to the approach of current evolutionary
psychology (Kirkpatrick, 2006) and due to that, also used in the current CSR.
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not get offended when I say that perhaps also because of this unavailability it is also
often underappreciated/overlooked/marginalized) part of human cultural history
which is, however, so significant that it shapes subsequent history and even our
present times. I mean tens of thousands199 (up to hundreds of thousands)200 of years
of our “cultural development” where we lack written records. In the current CSR we
encounter this form especially (but not exclusively) in the form of evolutionary
psychology accounts dealing with the evolution of mental capacities for religious
ideas and practices (the suit of psychological dispositions typical of modern sapiens
produced by genetic evolution).
In addition to this classification, there are other useful ways of dividing the
different evolutionary concepts of religion. One of them, to which I have dedicated
space in my thesis, uses a criterion of adaptation, which is originally from
evolutionary biology, regardless of whether it is an adaptation determined by genetic
or cultural fitness. Even here, the typology results in two types of hypotheses, and
religion is consequently seen either as an evolutionary adaptation or as a by-product
of adaptations.201
199 The theory of the “Great Leap Forward” or the “Upper Palaeolithic Revolution” – the rapid
transition to the behavioural modernity of anatomically modern humans, i.e., Homo sapiens (see
Diamond, 1997) – is dated at approximately fifty thousand years into the past. An alternative theory
suggests that the change was not rapidly revolutionary but evolutionarily gradual and accompanied
anatomically modern humans since their first “occurrence” two hundred thousand years ago (see
McBrearty & Brooks, 2000).
200 P. J. Richerson and R. Boyd have argued that humans’ (Archaic Homo Sapiens) ability to cumulate
more complex cultural adaptations occurred up to five hundred thousand years into the past (see
2005: chap. 4).
201
The criterion of division “adaptation vs. by-product” is broader (more general) because it comes
from evolutionary biology and after the transfer to the socio-cultural domain it is applicable to any
evolutionary processes (both of purely genetic evolution, and of gene-culture coevolution or purely
cultural evolution). The contribution of this distinction and of my own typology is that they do not
only help us navigate in the evolutionary theories of religion (they facilitate the study of Religious
Studies itself in organising various theories, methods and frameworks and in this ways it is thus
a “meta” contribution to the study of religion), but they also help with the organisation of the
evolutionary study of religion itself. And they do it by sorting and arranging the hypotheses with very
different predictions (to the presentation of which I devoted space in this thesis, wherever the theme
made it possible and appropriate) and placing them, in much brighter light, into oppositions which
are ultimately (ideally) decided based on empirical tests, which in turn results in genuine scientific
progress.
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One of the anticipated objections to my conclusions may be the criticism that
they are based on excessive essentialization of the neo-Darwinian theory of natural
selection: I take one definition of the theory (or concept) as it is currently used as
a standard, and I make it the only correct (as well as the only possible) way to
define/treat the theory (the concept). This in turn leads to the position that it is the
only way how to effectively work with that theory.
While I recognize that there may be specific cases where such essentialization
becomes an obstacle for innovative scientific work, it is necessary to see that such an
objection is built on a much more general level of the philosophy of science. It works
on the level that deals with the assessment of revolutionary changes and paradigm
shifts in research on the background of the whole stages or even entire epochs
(however they may shorten with the use of modern technology and increasing
amounts of involved scientists). Above all, it is an assessment which has at its
disposal the results, on the basis of which it evaluates the revolutionary contributions
and shifts. However, to apply this objection on the level of everyday scientific work
is in my opinion to misuse it. This is because it allows us to cheaply criticize the
efforts of anyone, who is trying to make the terminology more accurate. Even in my
view, nobody owns the theory of natural selection, it is not patented nor can anyone
sue another person for their “illegal,” “right” or “wrong” usage. However, my stance
is that on the level, which I described as everyday scientific work, the largest
progress is facilitated thanks to clear definitions which help us, together with more
accurate terminology, to express ourselves and to think more clearly.
The subsequent question of whether the transfer was made by using formally
adequate means, is actually a specific type of evaluative effort to assess the
legitimacy of the content of each model of cultural evolution, the progress it achieves
within the field, how useful it is, and in what way it expands our current account of
cultural change or history.202 However, none of the analysed models of cultural
Similarly, these questions were posed by J. Fracchia and R. C. Lewontin (1999: 78), when they asked
202
whether any “useful work is done by substituting the metaphor of evolution for history.”
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evolution succeed in convincing me that cultural evolution is anything more than
just a poor metaphor and an inaccurate/misleading analogy.
Cultural change is substantially different from biological change and even
though biological evolution influences cultural change, as it does with everything
that is based and anchored in the forms of living organisms, it does not guide
cultural change nor can it explain it. And it is important to realize that the fact that
culture changes in an “adaptive” way, does not prove that the analogy to natural
selection should be a good way to explain these changes. It can only explain those
aforementioned influences which constitute only a small part of the whole
phenomenon. The rest is much more appropriate (that is, useful) to access through
other theoretical frameworks. For if we use the term or the concept of evolution
when considering cultural change, we either (1) drag over all kinds of law-like
processes, assumptions and normative statements that are simply not applicable,
(2) make them applicable which distorts the phenomena in question, or (3) leave
these processes, assumptions and normative statements altogether and instead we fill
the term evolution with new meanings that are so close to the existing terms of
cultural change/history that it is a useless and redundant duplication. However, this
conclusion does not affect the EWCE approach to the study of culture/religion, which
is, in general, a huge contribution for the study of culture/religion even though its
explanatory power is limited.
The contribution I am drawing our attention to, has its price as well as its
risks. The need to overcome the scope and methodological limitations of single
disciplines by multidisciplinary research is associated both with the pressure to
increase its expertise in adjacent fields, and with the pressure for higher and broader
systematization/synthesis of the results of research in various fields. Unless the
multidisciplinary research is well managed, preferably by creating a team with
experts representing individual disciplines (the best option is of course the most
expensive one), the single researcher is forced to cover the full expertise of multiple
disciplines.
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Such pressure leads not only to unreasonable demands, but also to various
types of blunders. What I have in mind, for example, is how difficult it is for
a researcher, with no matter how deep and profound a training in one specialization,
to tell if a hypothesis from another field (judged only on the basis of itself) is being
scientifically parsimonious or too simplistic. This issue highlights, for example,
evolutionary anthropologist J. H. Langdon in his critique of the Aquatic Ape
Hypothesis.203 Aesthetically pleasing hypotheses that attract us because of their
apparent parsimony, are ease to convey and spread rapidly among non-specialists –
what Langdon calls “umbrella hypotheses.” According to Langdon, with certain
types of evolutionary hypotheses, the problem is even amplified (Langdon, 1997:
479), because: “as internally consistent hypotheses about the past, they are very
difficult to prove incorrect in an absolute sense.”
At the very end I would like to explicitly state that I hope that my critical
analysis is not going to be understood in a way that I stand in an opposition to the
new evolutionary study of religion, and that is because it is quite the contrary. I am
its serious advocate and I would like to see its great future, not only because of the
theoretical framework, but also because it brings a real effort in following up the
difficult ideal of multidisciplinary research. My biggest motivation was to strengthen
this new evolutionary study of religion through my critique, refine it and make it
stronger by removing mistakes and missteps that damage it in my eyes. Thus, let us
use tools from sciences that were originally developed to explain other phenomena,
including tools from sciences at first sight as remote as evolutionary biology. Some of
them may be/are very beneficial to our field (see cultural epidemiology). But we
should not use them recklessly. Some of the tools, no matter how tempting at first
glance they may seem, may be/are completely useless or may even lead to inflicting
major damage (such as neo-Darwinian natural selection).
203 The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, one of many hypotheses attempting to explain human evolution
through a single causal mechanism, suggests that humans underwent a period when they were
adapting to a semiaquatic existence, but returned to terrestrial life before having become fully adapted
to the aquatic environment.
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Masarykova univerzita

2014 Radek Kundt

Is Cultural Evolution Evolution?

Školitel: doc. PhDr. David Václavík, Ph.D.

V Brně dne 24. ledna 2014

CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL EVOLUTIONISM .......................................................... 33

EVOLUTIONARY STUDY OF CULTURE WITHOUT CULTURAL EVOLUTION ..... 111

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 133

Klíčová slova: náboženství, kulturní evoluce, koevoluce genu a kultury, skupinový

Keywords: religion, cultural evolution, gene-culture coevolution, group selection,

evolutionary theories and in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, to thus determine

evolution of religion rather than to the evolution of culture in general.

My analysis is not about repeating objections raised against the theories of

classical cultural evolutionists (mainly tying the notion of evolution to that of

mistakes, as they do not (which is true for a majority of present-day accounts).

qualify as contemporary cultural evolutionists worthy of analysis for the scientific

My analysis, on the contrary, consists of evaluating how contemporary

theories of cultural evolution fit all the core requirements of neo-Darwinian

cultural evolution. The purpose of this step is to show to what degree it is

a legitimate reasonable extension of this theory, thus making it applicable to the

study of cultural phenomena (e.g., religious phenomena), or if it is just a metaphor or

or “historical development” of cultural phenomena (including religious phenomena).

evolution elaborates the notion of evolution or distorts it.

contemporary approaches to the application of Darwinian evolutionary theory of

natural selection to explanation of cultural phenomena that do require genuine

memetics. The introduction will detail a classification of positions of their most

significant authors by specifying their hypotheses, a systematisation of their basic

arguments for the transfer of Darwinian evolutionary theory to the socio-cultural

domain, unfolding their theoretical presuppositions, and elucidating the methods

applied when explaining religious phenomena. Consequently, I will critically assess

neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection (phenotypic variation, heritability, and

I will also introduce an alternate neo-Darwinian evolutionary study of cultural

Evolution (EWCE) approach. I consider it a moderate, “safe” and very enriching

application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory on study of culture. In the chapter

“Evolutionary Study of Culture without Cultural Evolution,” I will identify its

First, it is necessary to emphasize how important for the intention of this

analysis it is to highlight the prefix “neo” in the “neo-Darwinian” denotation. Since

strength in the scientific community is indisputably credited to Darwin. In some

(or neo-Darwinian evolution/synthesis). It is not by accident that those authors who

creative work within those basic principles.

Their argument is then as follows: Darwin brought generally valid formal

content-free, and it is up to theorists to shape them according to the proprieties of the

used as a meta-framework applicable to all sorts of phenomena beside biological

implied the possibility of this applicability when he embarked on the speculative

broadest assumed form can is a metaphysical position (Universal Darwinism or

This argument loses its ground whenever we comprehend the theory of

natural selection in a strictly scientific definitional framework of modern neo-

Darwinian theory, refined to current form in biology. That is, evolution as it is

conceived in the domain of explanation of particular kinds of phenomena, ruled by

which is an integration of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with Mendelian

population genetics. The tendency of those advocating Generalised Darwinism is

similar to an ambition of employing the principles deduced from Bohr’s atomic

ideas to be naive or even proved them false.

frameworks. Neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection in biology gradually arrived at rejection of

framework theories are therefore constantly trying to legitimize their endeavour by

a completely independent species.

As I aspire to assess the transfer of a functional scientific theory from one

domain to another, and not engage in science-transcending philosophical arguments

or legitimacy politics of the meta-framework, I choose (from the very beginning of

not better explained just by comparisons to the natural selection. Alternatively:

anything useful to those explanatory approaches suitable.

6 They would always openly present those differences.

Within the limitations which define neo-Darwinian natural selection, I include

thus consists in increasing (successful entity) or decreasing (unsuccessful entity) the