My last post in the thread "The Creation of Inequality" has been churning in my head for the past few days like a song stuck in your head that won't go away.
My strongest contention was that evolutionary theory applies best (and exclusively) to biology.
But it's becoming more and more apparent as I look deeper that the term "evolution", and its precepts, have been and are continually being co-opted. I know the following list and its one-line summations of entire fields is likely very glib, but there is a larger pattern here.
Neo-Darwinian evolutionary Theory -- beyond the initial Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" and natural selection, this includes Wallace's anti-Lamarckian and Mendel's inheritance contributions.
It seems to me the further we stray away from NDT down this list, the more inheritance (Mendelian, not familial surplus) is bypassed, and a form of Lamarckianism re-endorsed (namely, that societal change is a conglomeration of acquired characteristics!)
Social evolution -- "social behaviors that have fitness consequences for individuals other than the actor". Behavior categorized into selfish, altruistic, mutually beneficial, and spiteful (hurts both actor and recipient).
Evolutionary game theory frames "Darwinian competition" into classical game theory context
Inclusive fitness -- organisms improve genetic success via altruistic social behaviors
Kin selection -- inclusive fitness enhanced via the reproductive success of an organism's relatives
Sociobiology -- social behavior results from evolution
Darwinian anthropology -- sociobiology, with an emphasis on kinship
Anything below this line seems to me to have abandoned NDT and therefore co-opted/conflated/diffused the term "evolution" and its mechanics. Do you agree?
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Neo-evolutionism -- tries to explain the evolution of societies using Darwinism (yikes!)
Cultural evolutionism -- explains human sociology from a social rather than biological basis
Sociocultural development -- societies are at different stages of "evolution"
Sociocultural evolution -- rejects sociocultural development (the idea of directional, social progress), in favor of neo-evolutionism, sociobiology, and modernization theory
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I don't think it should be lightly dismissed that the fields between the lines above may still make claims and counterclaims which profess to adhere to NDT, either explicitly or implicitly.
There is no teleology or willful direction in evolution. Societies and political structures do not have alleles or parents which donate half their DNA to offspring. The right hand of molecular genealogy knows not what the left hand of material artifacts does.
For culture is an abstraction, as are the terms used to define its internal and external "variables", local or universal or otherwise. Evolutionary theory has no province over abstractions.
NDT only applies to biology and its directly related sub-fields!! Yes? No? I guess I'm making a whole lot of ado about nothing. At least I got it all off my chest...