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Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 80 (2011) 657– 669

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Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

j ourna l ho me pag e: www.elsev ier .com/ locate / j ebo

Splitting the replicator: Generalized Darwinism and the place ofculture in nature

Claes Andersson ∗

Physical Resource Theory, Complex Systems Group, Department of Energy and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Goteborg, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 16 December 2009Received in revised form 1 March 2011Accepted 28 June 2011Available online 8 July 2011

JEL classification:B52O30

Keywords:Evolutionary social scienceEvolutionary epistemologyGeneralized DarwinismMemeticsReplication

a b s t r a c t

The concept of Replication has been turned around, moved about and hammered upon insearch for a good fit in the puzzle of Generalized Darwinism for a long time. The presentpaper represents a different take on the formulation of a Generalized Darwinism andon Replication. Replication in evolutionary biology is argued to combine two functions:(i) the production of propositions (Synthesis) and (ii) the retention of propositions overtime (Memory). By insisting on universally grouping these two functions together theReplicator–Interactor (RI) framework is here argued to suffer from a fundamental onto-logical mismatch that no amount of bending and stretching of the concept can avoid. Whenwe allow different packaging of Interaction, Synthesis and Memory (ISM) for different sys-tems, we produce much less empirical friction. Replication then emerges as an importantspecial case, but where replication is not the right model, the ISM model brings a range ofissues into the open that remain hidden from an RI viewpoint. Also, when we reserve repli-cation for the cases where it really fits we retain the strong theoretical power and empiricalrelevance by which it gained its fame in evolutionary biology.

© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Darwinism has been an important perspective in evolutionary social science for a long time and on the background ofthat and other extensions of Darwin’s theory (such as into immunology and neurophysiology; Jerne, 1955, 1967; Edelman,1987) it is natural that the idea of a Generalized Darwinism has emerged. We may identify as the two main roots of recentGeneralized Darwinism: (i) the evolutionary epistemology following Campbell (1960, 1965, 1974), Lorentz (1977, 1982) andPopper (1979), which stems from psychology and epistemology, and (ii) what we here refer to as the RI brand of modelsfollowing Dawkins (1976) and Hull (1980), which stems from the units-of-selection debate (Lewontin, 1970) in evolutionarybiology. Among these two it is the RI framework that has received the most attention in social science over the past decades,not least through the memetics movement (Dawkins, 1976; Dennett, 1995; Blackmore, 1999; Aunger, 2002).

The RI framework applied to sociocultural1 systems is appealing and intuitive on first acquaintance. As Sperber (2000)remarks: “Once the general idea of a meme is understood – and especially if it is understood fairly loosely – it is all too easyto see human social life as teeming with memes”. Sperber’s critical undertone gives expression to the common sentimentthat this intuitiveness has not proven to be a harbinger of deep insights. To the contrary, as soon as one probes below thissurface, narratives turn cumbersome, vague and arbitrary. Despite claims otherwise (Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010a), the RI

∗ Tel.: +46 31 7723127.E-mail address: [email protected]

1 The term sociocultural inclusively refers to the evolutionary system of human knowledge, artifacts and the social dynamics that forms its substrate.

0167-2681/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2011.06.027


658 C. Andersson / Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 80 (2011) 657– 669

framework is hardly characterized by a “positive heuristic”(Lakatos, 1971), but rather the exact opposite: it may generate alot of new questions about itself but it has produced few non-trivial insights about sociocultural evolution.

As a consequence, far from everybody is convinced of the value of Replicators and Interactors in the social sciences. Theresulting criticism (and passive lack of interest) is often portrayed by advocates as unfair. Critics are seen as attacking (orignoring) some made-up crude analogy with evolutionary biology that severely misrepresents tailor-made socioculturalDarwinism or properly extracted general Darwinian principles (e.g. Crozier, 2008; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010a). This iscertainly true. Darwinism is often rejected and accepted on the level of superficial understanding. But the fact is that evenwhen they are properly understood, neither sociocultural nor Generalized Darwinism has so far really begun to accumulatethe critical mass of results that will ultimately be what has to convince critics.2

What is particularly frequently causing problems and disagreements is the concept of replication (see also Goodfrey-Smith, 2000; Edmonds, 2002, 2005; Nelson, 2006; Crozier, 2008). Sure enough, replication can be argued to occur in differentshapes and forms in social systems. But it is simply not obvious how replication could be as fundamental to social scienceas it clearly is to biology. Where is all this replication? What about replication that clearly does not lead anywhere, such asphotocopying and mass production? Addressing such concerns, it has long been acknowledged that all types of replicationare not equally relevant to Darwinism and that replication can be much more subtle than base-pair replication in biology.Replication has consequently been refined and split up3 into sub-classes (Smith and Szathmáry, 1995; Szathmáry andMaynard-Smith, 1997; Szatmáry, 2000; Goodfrey-Smith, 2000; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2008, 2010a,b). But outside of a rathersmall circle, few have been satisfied that this addresses the problem in a satisfactory way and establishes that replicationholds a key role for understanding how sociocultural structure emerges.4

The outcome has been a proliferation of definitions with ever more detailed and specific clauses that make generalizedreplication at once more arbitrary (since criteria often deal with problems as they happen to turn up) and more bloated.5

Apart from the exercise itself being of questionable value, the question is what happens with the theoretical power ofreplication as it is stretched and bent to fit an empirical picture? Is it still at all the same concept? Here it is argued that itis not and that the exercise is futile: the failure to iron out misunderstandings is a symptom of a real ontological mismatchthat no amount of stretching and bending can get us out of.

What if we ask why – more exactly – we should expect replication to be fundamental to the evolution of sociocultural sys-tems? Why do we even want it in a Generalized Darwinism? Such questions have not been directly and properly addressed.It is true that Developmental Systems Theory (Griffiths and Gray, 1994, 2005; Oyama et al., 2001) and its later developmentswith reproducers instead of replicators (e.g. Griesemer, 2000; Griesemer and Wimsatt, 2007) have been proposed as analternative to replication models, but the cyclical re-generation of entities housing heritable information remains central sothe aim there is really more to re-define replication. Some furthermore prefer to emphasize heredity rather than replication(e.g. Aunger, 2002; Lewontin, 1970), and while this is closer to the position taken here, also the term heredity implies thepassage of generations (cf. that although the information in a book persists we do not say that it is inherited from day to day.)The Replicator (Dawkins, 1976) is also vigorously debated in the literature, but this does not mean that the role of replicationitself is thereby questioned. Replication belongs to the unexamined sphere of common sense knowledge: everybody knowsit is central to Darwinism, how could it not be?

Apart from evolutionary epistemology, where replication is little mentioned, it is only very recently (Andersson, 2008;Pelikan, 2011) that replication’s immunity has begun to be questioned in a positive way, i.e. without thereby rejectingGeneralized Darwinism. Pelikan (2011) concludes, much in line with Andersson (2008) and the present paper, that replicationis only one way to maintain what is here referred to as a system Memory, and that the emphasis on replication is animportant reason why modern Generalized Darwinism appears foreign and is not seen as helpful in the social sciences. Thepresent positive critique of replication in Darwinism rests on two main pillars: (i) taking some key lessons from evolutionaryepistemology to heart and (ii) analyzing more closely what replication seems to be where it has proven its worth theoreticallyand empirically. It is clear that it does hold a key role in some Darwinian systems, so at the very least it should hold keylessons for a Generalized Darwinism.

The paper is arranged as follows. First we frame and motivate the present inquiry with an outline of its ideational context.This leads us to the argument for why and how replication should be seen as a combination between two more basic func-tions. We conclude that replication should be factorized into Synthesis and Memory, yielding three fundamental Darwinianfunctions: Interaction, Synthesis and Memory. Opening up for the possibility of different combinations between three ratherthan two functions, we then proceed to account briefly for a hierarchy of selection systems, many of which have not (at least

2 This is far from denying the merit and influence of all sociocultural selectionist theorizing. Selectionist theories that have emerged because they madesense, such as the work of Nelson and Winter (1982), have fared better than selection theories that have emerged because they seemed mandated byuniversal principles. This probably does not have to be the case, but perhaps the feeling of being a priori in the right has desensitized universalists fromsubtle and not-so-subtle empirical signals – they may have been a little bit too willing to bite bullets.

3 The split proposed here and in Andersson (2008) is however not a new taxonomization into replication types but a factorization of replication intomore fundamental functions.

4 Or at least that there is good hope that it will be found to play such a role once we nail down the right set of singly necessary and jointly sufficientcriteria. That in turn of course presupposes that finding universal classical categories is necessary or even important; following Wittgenstein (1953) this issomething that can be doubted.

5 But note that this exercise is considerably more motivated in biology where replication is theoretically and empirically powerful.


C. Andersson / Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 80 (2011) 657– 669 659

according to many) been convincingly cast as RI selection systems. In particular we look at a type of selection system thatenables high-level prescience. Finally, we look at three concepts – memetics, Lamarckism and generative replication – inthe light of the present argument.

2. Theoretical outline

Andersson (2008) speaks of a Greater System of Knowledge (GSK): a system of systems in constant adaptation, continuallygiving rise to structures to which we like to assign final causes and speak of as having functions. Cziko (1995) notes that thehistorical explanations of how such systems work have gone through a specific sequence of stages: providence (creation,design, prior natural selection), instruction (imprinting of the environment, e.g. Lamarckism) and finally selection (e.g.biological Darwinian evolution). And indeed, more and more of these adapting systems have been revealed as selectionsystems operating wholly or partly on Darwinian principles. Apart from biological evolution we have to this date clonalselection (Jerne, 1955; Burnet, 1957; Edelman, 2004), neural selection (Edelman, 2004; Changeux, 1985; Changeux andRicoeur, 2000; Edelman, 1987), cognitive selection (Campbell, 1960, 1974; Plotkin, 1994; Simonton, 1999; Cziko, 2000),sociocultural selection (e.g. economics, technology, anthropology and science) and finally a growing range of computerbased technologies for quasi-cognitive adaptation based on selection (see e.g. Fernando et al., 2010).

But why would we expect to see such a profusion of adapting systems in the first place? Edelman (1993) argues thatit is the general adaptive value of recognition that brings the need for new selection systems. Plotkin (1994) talks aboutthe uncertain futures problem and how organisms must deal with things that they simply have never encountered before,neither during their lifetime nor over their evolutionary history; things that turn up faster than what the rate of biologicaladaptation can deal with. Very similar arguments have also been putforth by Lorentz (1977, 1982). So the principle by whichthese Knowledge Systems (KS) operate is at the same time the principle by which they themselves arise and evolve.

So despite all the problems listed in Section 1, there are good reasons to remain committed to the development of aDarwinian account of social systems and knowledge in general. Some have been argued before (see e.g. Aldrich et al., 2008;Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010a) but there are also even deeper theoretical reasons to insist. The deeper significance of Darwin-ism for understanding knowledge (and by that a lot of related things) was first brought out in the evolutionary epistemologyof Campbell (1960, 1965, 1974) (see also Popper, 1979; Lorentz, 1977, 1982; Cziko, 1995, 2000; Ruse, 2009) which basicallystates that if we are to remain naturalists, then Blind-Variation-Selective-Retention (BVSR) must be behind every and any“instance of fit” (Campbell, 1974) in culture, biology and elsewhere. Because of frequent and notable misunderstandings6 itshould be clarified that “blind” novelty does not mean “unbiased” or “random” or any such thing. It simply means that theconsequences of the produced novelty did not a priori guide its generation. Crozier (2008) refers to this as “un-strategic”,which also captures the meaning well.

Evolutionary epistemology uses a concept of knowledge that Popper (1979) describes as objective, as opposed to subjectiveand intrinsically related to a state of mind. Today it is hardly controversial to be of the opinion that there is a material basisfor states of mind, so the connection between objective and subjective knowledge appears neither mysterious, impossibleor sacrilegious. What is interesting is that objective knowledge gives us a mixed discourse that connects natural sciencewith philosophy. Objective knowledge furthermore rests on a certain assumption about what the real world is like and howknowledge about it can be gained that is often referred to as hypothetical realism. Hypothetical realism represents preciselythe type of shift described above: from seeing the world as either revealed to us or as imprinting itself on us to seeing ourselvesas making hypotheses about the world that we do not know whether they are right or wrong until we look and see. Wehave a freedom to reject or keep our hypotheses, a freedom we can make contingent on things like truth, utility, pleasureand so on. Recursive hypothesis-making and consultation of reality through our senses then makes truthlikeness possible ifwe by truth mean more mundane things than we historically have. To the scientist, the similarity between this scheme andadaptation by natural selection is typically quite clear even with cursory knowledge about Darwinism. Philosophers (withtheir long, deep and sophisticated tradition of studying knowledge, being and such things) are somewhat harder to please,but considering the present audience we will only note this and not delve more deeply into such considerations (that is donemuch better elsewhere, see e.g. Ruse, 2009).

If we adopt this concept of “objective knowledge” or “knowledge without a knower” then this means that BVSR must alsounderpin a wide variety of adapting processes. This is the hypothetically realistic hypothesis that we explore here. Whence(save miraculously; Cziko, 1995) would knowledge otherwise ultimately come in a myopic world except from blind sources?The BVSR needs not be presently taking place and it need not be proximate and in the open, but it must reside somewhereand at sometime; mature does not serve structures that “are for something” just like that, or like Hull et al. (2001) say “theefficient production of novelty and order may not sound like an oxymoron, but we suspect that it is”. It is precisely this BVSRconstraint that we have seized upon here as a crucial structuring principle when inquiring into the history and organization

6 For example Witt (2009) who after dismissing Campbell’s “blindness” goes on to an excellent analysis that makes use of something very similar tothat concept, but that would have a lot to gain by actually using the insights of evolutionary epistemology. More in general, this misunderstanding of whatCampbell really says leads to a mistaken rejection (e.g. Witt, 2003, 2009; Cordes, 2006) of the project of generalized Darwinism on the basis that it does notfit sociocultural systems proximately. That said, much of their criticism against how this generalization has in practice been attempted is very relevant.



of the GSK: a structurally and genealogically interlocked system of Knowledge Systems (KS).7 The principle is that knowledgethat is efficiently produced implies the presence of more basic KS where we may ultimately account for the wastefulnessimplied by BVSR. These KS will be interlocked and mutually affect one another, so although we must understand them eachsingly such an understanding demands that we also understand how they are linked.

The model that is developed here (Andersson, 2008) uses a functional representation similar to the RI (Hull, 1980, 1988;Dawkins, 1983) ontology, but views RI as a special case packaging of a more basic set of functions: Interaction, Synthesis andMemory (ISM). A KS is then a system where these three functions are served, for example biological evolution, the adaptiveimmune system, neural systems and sociocultural systems. Replication combines the latter two in some KS (sometimesserving only Memory). Interaction remains in the form familiar from the RI framework meaning that it concerns ex posttesting of hypothetical novelty, or more generally the revealing of merit (resulting in positive selection) through interactionbetween system and environment. Synthesis is the generation of hypothetical novelty and Memory is the retention ofInteraction features (objective knowledge) over time, including any mechanisms for finding and retrieving knowledge.

There is no requirement in the ISM ontology that there ought to be physical or even metaphorical Interactors, Synthesizersand Memorizers or some such. It is simply noted that the system as a whole should serve these three functions and thatwe should be able to account for how this functionality is realized. However, we will often see structures and processescompartmentalized along at least some of these functional separation lines; e.g. into quite specialized components that wemay be tempted (and even somewhat justified) to call Replicators and Interactors. The reason, as will be discussed shortly, isthat compartmentalization allows deeper specialization: it is for adaptive reasons rather than by principle, see also Sterelnyet al. (1996). From the point of view that functional separation and specialization itself constitute adaptation we are (perhapssurprisingly from other perspectives) even more likely to find hints about a Generalized Darwinism in more sophisticatedhigh-level systems (like culture) than we are in primitive low-level selection systems (like biology). Primitive structures aremore likely to represent simple ways of serving many functions at the same time while sophisticated structures are likelyto have subsystems that are specialized along functional lines; compare the level of specialization in tools of amateurs andspecialists.

While evolutionary biology provides a quite direct connection between biology and the inanimate and myopic world ofphysics and chemistry, the task here is different: there is a whole hierarchy of KS between the level of sociocultural evolutionand that of dynamics describable in physical terms. So Darwin’s objective of understanding how adaptations can arise ina non-adapting substrate is here joined by the task of understanding how adapting systems give rise to yet new adaptingsystems. One of the chief roles of a generalized theory of knowledge is argued to be that of acting as a bridge between thusrelated KS that, because of their idiosyncracies and different scales, must be proximately understood in completely differentterms; e.g. biological evolution, the adaptive immune system, the brain and human societies.8 From such a perspective wewill see how this triad of fundamental functions is served in different ways in different KS. Most importantly, we see howthese systems have emerged to complement one another in providing knowledge generation capability over a wide rangeof scales of time and space; how the emergence of a sufficiently open-ended KS set off a cascade that still shows no signs ofsettling down. To see this, we must bite over the whole layered cake, which we will do shortly, but first let us address theconcept of replication.

3. Splitting the atom

How can we argue that replication is not a fundamental Darwinian function, but instead a (common but not universal)combination of functionality? What we need to do is to look under the hood of replication: what does it do in the systemswhere it really is theoretically powerful? Here we will focus on the importance of faithful replication, a consideration thatis central in evolutionary biology and that pops up periodically also in the writings of Darwinists in the sociocultural andphilosophical context. Anyone can see that if there is too much error in replication, information will risk being lost. But,more exactly, what happens if we vary mutation rates? Darwinists in social science and philosophy are not very clear aboutthis, and it appears they do not see that it would be important, or even possible to be clear.

Judging from citation patterns, Dawkins (1976) has been the main vector from biology to social science of the idea thatreplication fidelity is important, and Dawkins in turn supports himself on Williams (1966). Dawkins (1976) came just beforeEigen and Schuster (1977) and was therefore for obvious reasons unable to support himself on new theory that would indeedhave told him a lot more about the how and why of the importance of replication fidelity (Eigen and Schuster, 1977; Nilssonand Snoad, 2000, 2002). Without such a rationale the importance of faithful replication becomes little more than a claim;a reasonable claim by all means, supported by William’s logical argument, and by the empirical observation that mutationrates are indeed very low, but still seemingly defeatable by ad hoc models and arguments. That is also how it has been treated

7 Our point of departure (basically from evolutionary epistemology) is therefore quite different from that of the RI ontology (which departs from theunits of selection debate). This can be seen for example from the fact that we do not hypostatize units of selection such as Replicators or Interactors.

8 Pelikan (2011) also sees the importance of stressing this nested structure of KS’s where we may address important questions about how they bothgenerate and become the conditions for each other.



in the literature (see e.g. Sterelny et al., 1996; Sperber, 2000; Atran, 2001; Henrich and Boyd, 2002; Hodgson and Knudsen,2010b).9

What Eigen and Schuster (1977) did was to model the information transmission aspects of replicator dynamics. They didthis primarily to throw new light on how hypothesized populations of proto-biological RNA molecules could have worked.These would lack enzymatic error correction and one of the important questions (termed Eigen’s Paradox) was whetherproto-life would need error correction in order to carry enough information to obtain error correction. What they needed(among other things) was to better understand how mutation rate and selection pressure affects the amount of informationthat can be maintained over time. The wisdom that replication must be exact could thereby receive a formal and quantitativeinterpretation that confirmed the intuition but at the same time articulated it considerably. This quasi-species model is highlyabstract, as it should be if the critical causal relationships are to be clearly brought out. A population of bit strings, whereeach bit combination corresponds to a reproductive rate, undergo generations of selection and mutation by flipping bits.10

No mutations will give trivial results, but what happens if we tune the per-bit mutation rate in such a system? We shouldnow be able to see whether, and if so how, faithful replication is important.

The quasi-species models clearly showcase how dynamical systems, even with very simple rules and entities, oftenbehave in ways that are impossible to intuit. It turns out that the dynamics has two distinct regimes: (i) the replicators“swarm” around the fitness peak; i.e. the maximally fit sequence is in majority, surrounded in sequence space by mutatedversions. (ii) The maximally fit sequence is no more common than any other sequence; i.e. fitness does not affect relativefrequency. These two regimes do not lead smoothly to one another, but are separated by a phase transition referred to asan error catastrophe by Eigen and Schuster; i.e. at a certain critical error rate, we leave the adaptive regime (i) and findourselves transported directly to the epistemologically barren regime (ii).

The lessons that we want to draw from this is first that the replicator dynamics serves two clearly distinguishable roles– Synthesis and Memory – and that these roles risk being concealed within an atomic replication concept. Second it is thatby combining these two roles it is constrained in the performance of both. With a separate Memory, much higher rates ofvariation could be used since the population could always revert to a persistent copy if needed; this is incidentally usedin genetic algorithms and is referred to as “elitism”. We thereby learn not only that, but also to a large extent how, theintroduction of propositions (Synthesis) and the retention of propositions (Memory) are related and mutually constrainingin a replicator dynamics. In biological natural selection replication clearly carries the full burden of serving both thesefunctions: if it fails at either, no adaptation is possible. If we remove (or more likely simply overlook) this Memory role, thenreplication is no longer the same thing. This allows us to open up for asking whether replication is really the only way toachieve Synthesis and Memory in a Darwinian KS.

The two functions of Synthesis and Memory that replication combines are treated separately in the ISM model and we arethereby able to cover biological replication as a special case as well as systems where these two functions are not combinedin that way. If, as we believe is the case, we may have perfectly Darwinian systems where Synthesis and Memory are servedby separate or otherwise bundled structures and processes, we may look in vain for a Replicator that combines them: theremay be none. So if we insist on still forcing replication into the picture where it does not belong, it will appear far-fetchedand artificial.

The replication concept then becomes bloated rather than abstract and succinct since we must force it to sometimesmean Memory and sometimes Synthesis and as soon as we face either of these functions we must somehow cast them asreplication or invoke theoretical dead-ends like Lamarckism. And there seems to really be no reason to be too preoccupiedwith replication: (i) it is hard to see how otherwise but efficaciously served Memory and Synthesis would still best beviewed as replication or (ii) that the absence of replication still would somehow render evolutionary adaptation inefficacious.Furthermore, (iii) there exist no powerful formalisms that we stand to lose along with replication in Generalized Darwinism(as we would with population genetics in evolutionary biology for example).

The notion that adaptation should tend to lead to the split-up of functionality between components of more specializedfunctional scope11 is hardly exotic or controversial in itself. We see it in everything from the division of labor in social scienceto ecological niches (Hardin, 1960). Moreover, from RNA (Gilbert, 1986; Orgel, 1992; Smith and Szathmáry, 1995; Orgel,2004) or autocatalytic cycles (Ycas, 1955; Eigen, 1971; Eigen and Schuster, 1977) embodying all Darwinian mechanisms inone single structure, the DNA system’s genotype–phenotype dichotomy represents the splitting off and subsequent deepspecialization of replication (combining Synthesis and Memory) and the Interaction function. The RI framework must hencealso explain the separation of Interaction from replication (via ontogeny) using this logic, as Sterelny et al. (1996) do whenthey explain the privileged role of biological Replicators as a specialized adaptation to a key role in the “total developmentalmatrix”. What we do here is simply to reapply it to replication itself. Indeed, not only can we have Darwinian evolution inthe absence of replication. We should expect KS’s to be more powerful the better separated, specialized and adapted thestructures serving these three functions are.

9 Particularly curious is the model introduced by Hodgson and Knudsen (2010b) that is highly similar to that of Eigen and Schuster (1977) and that alsoseems to reproduce similar results but appears to have been developed entirely independently of it. However, they do not quantify or draw any generallessons from the outcomes apart from arguing that “too much” error violates a criterion for their category of generative replication.

10 The reader is referred to above cited papers and related work for details.11 If, as we believe, we may think of such components themselves undergoing adaptation.



4. The greater system of knowledge

Armed with the principle that different KS may serve these three functions in different ways, and most importantly,that many functions may be served by the same structure, we will now consider two main questions: (i) how is Interaction,Synthesis and Memory realized proximately in different KS, and (ii) can we see patterns in how KS are related to one another?So let us account for a number of “recognition systems” in terms of the ISM model. In these varied and re-invented selectionsystems we might hope to see realized different types of separations and combinations between these functions. We willnote in particular:

1. How new KS have either developed as parts of, and alongside with, an existing ancestral KS that then lingers in some role(i.e. in a quite standard evolutionary fashion), or arise out of precursors that address the same problems but in a staticfashion in the Interaction function of an underlying KS.

2. How KS have cascades out from the inception to spanning Interaction challenges and opportunities on a variety of scales.3. The importance of vicarious12 embedded KS for introducing proximate prescience and design.

Let us begin our brief tour from the bottom, moving towards the level of human culture.The origin of life is today mostly imagined as involving a rich primordial chemistry where metabolism pre-dates and

generates the preconditions for Darwinian selection; e.g. surface metabolism, see Wächtershäuser (1988), see also Morowitz(2004) and Morowitz and Smith (2007). Key to this view (as apposed to a much simpler “naked replicator” view) is the deeperunderstanding of self-organization that has emerged over the past decades: although adaptation per se cannot result fromself-organization,13 self-organization in simple chemistry can lead not only to complicated molecules but to systems ofinteractions between such molecules (Ycas, 1955; Eigen and Schuster, 1977). Thereby, self-organization could credibly haveset the scene for the emergence of an original KS.

Populations of autocatalytic RNA molecules are typically identified as a pre-cursor to DNA-based life (Gilbert, 1986;Orgel, 1992, 2004; Smith and Szathmáry, 1995). Apart from a capacity for autocatalysis, the appeal of RNA in this role lies inhow it combines a number of key features: structural and thereby functional versatility, chemical simplicity, close chemicalsimilarity with DNA and its continued important role in the genetic cellular machinery. RNA molecules and autocatalyticcycles alike undergo variation (Synthesis) maintain a long-term memory to the extent that they replicate with sufficientfidelity (Memory) and can interact with variable success (Interaction).14 In other words, they combine all three functions inthe same set of structures. Being the only selection system on the block at the time, the fact that the primordial KS ability toadapt was limited by its structural generality (e.g. any shape or property that hindered replication was of course maladaptiveregardless of how adaptive it was Interaction-wise) was less important: non-adapting complex chemistry would be sittingducks against any operational KS.

Primordial proto-life was at an early stage supplanted by DNA-based life with its characteristically separated and (thereby)flexible Interaction function and the combined Memory and Synthesis functions shielded and secluded in the form of repli-cating genetic material.15 We thereby get the characteristic RI ontology where we also have a genotype and a phenotype. Thisseparation has been deepened in many stages by a range of processes all the way from from DNA-to-RNA transcription tomorphogenesis (Alberts et al., 2008; Slack, 2005) and social dynamics. The importance of a genotype–phenotype distinctionis often stressed in the literature. We concur, but elaborate by saying that all functional separations have the potential toboost adaptive capability; this possibility does not arise with the RI framework since two functions can only be grouped intwo ways whereas three functions can be combined in five ways.

While we can view DNA genetics as a more advanced version of an earlier RNA genetics, this is not so for advancedimmune systems. Here like in the example that follows next, the BVSR operation emerges as an adaptation of Interactionstructures of the original (here DNA-based) KS through what Lane (2005) calls “sandwiched emergence”. This means that thesystem basically retains both the material foundations and the overall function of the ancestral system. The genealogy of theadaptive16 vertebrate (with some exceptions such as hagfish and lampreys) immune system can indeed be traced back tonon-adapting predecessor systems that are uncomplicated parts of an Interactor function (see Hoffmann, 2004; Schulenburget al., 2004). Elements of this previous solution can still be seen in operation also in vertebrates: the innate immune system

12 Vicariousness was introduced by Campbell (1974) in this context. Basically, it means that we do something cheap instead of something expensive,where the benefit of the savings outweighs the loss in quality. Campbell stressed the ubiquity and importance of such solutions. For instance, vision isvicarious for physical locomotion: we look instead of performing physical exploration. In this paper we stress the importance of being able to carry outvicarious BVSR, for example on mental models of the world and on other models (experimental, theoretical, etc.) in social settings. It is when this vicariousdynamics “runs ahead of” the dynamics that it models that the phenomenon of prescience appears.

13 We here connect adaptation with the concept of function and adopt the view that functions are distinguished by their having a role in bringingthemselves about (Schlosser, 1998).

14 Jablonka and Szatmary (1995) treat the combined Interaction and Memory function in their concept of analog replication. The concept of reproducersis moreover intended to capture this particular functional combination between Interaction, Synthesis and Memory, where Interaction structures arereproduced without involvement of a dedicated Memory (such as genetic material) meaning that they serve Memory functions for themselves.

15 It is well to note that there are many structures of the cell that are not genetically specified and never built from scratch. These remain with Interaction,Synthesis and Memory unified although most, such as the cell membrane, are also modified (and thus adapted) under genetic control.

16 “Adapting‘” would really be less ambiguous, but it is referred to as the adaptive immune system so we will stick to convention.



is not recombinatorially adaptive and it operates alongside the adaptive immune system as a first line of defense along withphysical barriers such as skin and mucous membranes in the role of keeping pathogens out (ibid.). This adaptive immunesystem thus forms a re-invented KS with Interaction, Synthesis and Memory operating within the Interaction function of theDNA-based KS. The Interaction function of this new KS consists in the interaction between immune cells and pathogens: thisis where success and failure are decided. Synthesis is effected by a profuse generation of blind variants in populations that aresubject to selection via variable success in Interaction. There is replication, and it does combine Memory and Synthesis. Butthis is not the entire Memory function over the longer time scale of the organism’s lifespan, as evidenced by the existence ofcells explicitly called “memory cells” whose source of longevity (on the timescale of organism lifespan) is static survival andnot a result of repeated Replication in a Memory function. By the emergence of the adaptive immune system, macroscopiclife managed to man a defensive line on its microscopic flank where action is too small and too fast for its motor and sensorycapabilities and too fast for adaptation via the generational cycle.

The interaction between macroscopic organisms and their environment at their own spatial scale is slower but stillfast relative to generation cycles. This creates another “blind spot” for DNA-based phenotypic adaptation. To exploit thispotential, and to counter threats from others exploiting it, yet another KS faster than DNA-based evolution was needed: thecentral nervous system. This KS, like the immune system, is also a part of the Interaction function of the underlying DNA-based phylogenetic KS and it also widely believed to be based on a completely re-invented selection dynamics. Hypothesesabout how the brain actually accomplishes cognition are by necessity mostly based on plausibility since the mechanismsof brain function in terms of microscopic neuronal mass dynamics is little known in detail. Edelman’s theory of neuronalgroup selection (Edelman, 1987, 1993, 2004) sticks out from the crowd by containing less plausibility arguments (or worse,chains of plausible steps) and more detailed empirical support than average.

In Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection, it is Interaction and Memory that share the same structures and it isSynthesis that is the most clearly separated. Synthesis here comes in the form of pre-produced blind neuronal connectivityand is entirely separated from Interaction and Memory (see e.g. Edelman, 1987, 1993; Cziko, 2000). The populations ofneuronal groups are both what Interacts and what constitutes Memory; in Edelman’s theory there is no replication anddecoding of descriptions like we have in biological evolution.17 Consequently, if this is the case, a genotype–phenotypedistinction makes no sense and we could go searching for Replicators forever without finding any. Of course, being a vicar-ious KS, the neural system makes no sense unless coupled to the external system to which it is vicarious, and where theultimate test of its knowledge resides. It is the external world that really matters and from our perspective the role of theneural KS is to reduce the cost and risk involved in the inescapable BVSR needed to form knowledge about this externalworld.

The “neuronal replicator hypothesis” of Fernando et al. (2010) should also be mentioned here since it explicitly arguesfor the existence of replicators in neural adaptation. Replicators are there seen as necessary and as an analytical con-sequence of the Darwinian hypothesis; they see the necessity of Replicators for Darwinian natural selection as a donedeal. This means that if they want to maintain a Darwinian position on brain function, they better find replicators in thebrain. But the argument for their existence is very much based on plausibility: Replicators would work in this role (asfar as they can see) and they propose what they see as plausible mechanisms for how replication could be implementedneurally. Besides there being little direct evidence of neural Replicators, the arguments why substantial adaptation bynatural selection would be impossible without replication is not particularly strong: the generation of populations byreplication is claimed to be necessary for getting out of local fitness minima. This is proven by demonstrating that a hillclimbing algorithm will get stuck where a genetic algorithm will not, and to say that Edelman’s model is necessarily ahill-climbing algorithm rather than a genetic ditto. That is however not the impression of the present author. What theyreally claim is that a hill-climbing algorithm is too narrowly path-dependent, and that while the genetic algorithm is ofcourse also highly path-dependent it is still more likely to wiggle itself out of local minima. Why is the latter less pathdependent? The reason is that it scans the local solution space much more widely, so it can negotiate rougher fitnesslandscapes. But there is nothing that says the pre-produced variation (as in Edelman’s theory) could not also have thiseffect.

The human brain occupies a key role also in the sociocultural Memory function (increasingly complemented by externalMemory media) and it is virtually alone in the Synthesis function. Interaction extends (further and further) from our physiol-ogy with its original powerful endowment of opposable thumbs, stereoscopic vision, etc. The flexibility of human Interactioncapabilities and the generality of human cognition as a Synthesis system constitute the engine behind a knowledge explosionthat is rapid enough to register as momentary on the time scales of biological evolution. But without the traction providedby a powerful Memory, this impressive machinery would still only be burning rubber18: the cascade we witness needs alarge and versatile cultural Memory. The argument here goes that far from relying on replication, it was when socioculturalMemory broke out of such a reliance (with the strong constraint on information carrying capacity, see Section 3) that theexplosive growth of the sociocultural world (following cities and civilization) was trigged. Memory innovations generate

17 Although this could of course be the case on more aggregated mental levels.18 Which is not to say that human cognition used to be unnecessarily oversized. Rather, the original adaptive value and evolutionary driver of human

cognition is more and more seen as being its use in social interaction, not for inventing, retaining and accumulating advanced technology and such things(see e.g. Alvard, 2003; Sterelny, 2007).



both the demand and the possibility for even more Memory innovation, and it can be argued that Memory innovations haveplayed key roles in sociocultural complication throughout our history as a cultural species.

That the original move from non-culture to culture must have involved the emergence of a long-term Memory is initself hardly controversial, and for palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists, this is central to how culture is defined (seee.g. Boesch, 2003). Without such an ability to carry knowledge over longer times scales, nothing from the neural KS, whoseMemory has a persistence identical to that of the organism, can accumulate into a culture19: we would have Synthesisand Interaction but not Memory over the cultural time scale. Long-term Memory, and thereby culture, must thereby haveemerged once important amounts of knowledge could make it from one generation to the next.

Two distinct regimes (although historically overlapping) that can be discerned are: (i) primitive sociocultural Memoryrelying on a noisy and precarious chain of socially communicating human knowers that could be seen as a Replicatordynamics in some important contexts (Andersson, 2008), and, (ii) a separated and refined set of sociocultural Memorystructures based on physically persistent storage media where important parts of sociocultural knowledge can grow andbecome refined at a much greater rate. Along human history and pre-history, Memory would become further improvedby language and social structures like division of labor, myths, storytelling traditions and trade networks. Later yet we seewriting, cities, institutions, computers and the Internet, all revolutionizing in their Memory roles.20

Sociocultural Memory relies on everything between meme-like ideas in great flux to ideas extremely stabilized by textsand institutions and knowledge embodied in artifacts. All of these complement and support each other and they havemoreover dynamically evolved in one another’s presence; consequently, the question of which Memory form that would befundamental is likely altogether confused. What we can discern, however, is an accelerating invention of external Memorymedia, adapted specifically to that role. The brain remains the spider in the web for now: virtually all knowledge still needsto pass through it, but we stand to gain greatly performance-wise from complementing it. Clearly, the easiest brain functionto complement is that of Memory – only very lately have we even begun to complement its Synthesis role.

4.1. Vicarious Knowledge Systems

Whether “the efficient production of novelty” (the prime example of which would be prescience) is an oxymoron or not(Hull et al., 2001) depends critically on what we mean by efficient. To go from Paris to New York we must cross a distanceof just over 5800 km and any offer for a shorter route can be revealed as a scam on the basis of basic geometry. However, ifwe by efficiency allow ourselves to mean other things besides distance, then this bone hard constraint suddenly leaves uswith an ocean of possibilities. We may not only choose between different means of transportation but we may even invent(within other constraints of physics) entirely new means of transportation. The situation with wastefulness and knowledgeproduction is analogous: knowledge comes to the inevitable cost of trial-and-error, but we can expend energy and time,and we can re-use already earned knowledge, more or less wisely. Embedding KS within the Synthesis21 operation of ahigh-level KS so as to be able to spend trial-and-error where it can be spent cheaply, at a high rate and with less risk allowsan efficiency improvement in a highly relevant sense.

In biological natural selection it happens that selection obtains its feedback from exactly the dynamics to which adaptationtakes place. This is however not something that is essential to Darwinism. If system S is adapted to environment E, it doesnot matter in principle whether this adaptation really happened in interaction with E or with something E* that is justsufficiently similar to E. It is clear that nothing at all rules out the possibility of vicarious selection, and that nothing rules outthat E* can be similar in sought-for aspect while at the same time being much more attractive in terms of size, cost, speedand so on. Prescience is unrealistic only insofar as it suggests something supernatural: there can be prescience that dissolvesinto blind physical processes if we look closely but that for all practical purposes – on its own scale – really does give usprescient variation.

How could this work? In want of strong empirical evidence, we now have to join others in dealing with what is theo-retically suggested, plausible and consistent with facts as far as we know. Consider a Darwinian neural basis for cognition;possibly along the lines of Edelman (1987), or maybe more like the account of Fernando et al. (2010), or in some other way.Say that this BVSR system constructs internal models, evolved to be in agreement with what sensory input reveals aboutexternal systems, and hypotheses evolved with the use of such models. Now, since the neural medium is small and fast,there is nothing that prevents the possibility of these models to run ahead of the external present and generate what wouldclearly look like truth-like a priori statements.

The neural system, as opposed to the equally embedded immune system, is locked away from the world with which itis concerned and is connected to it only via sensory and motor nerves; its connection to its task is much more indirect: it isembedded and vicarious. The vicariousness of neural systems was perhaps originally nothing more than a necessity; after

19 Beyond the extent to which the Baldwin effect or similar could cover this ground genetically and create the somewhat culture-like behavior of manyanimals (see e.g. Sterelny, 2004; Weber and Depew, 2003).

20 Despite that the great promise of ICT would appear to lie in the Synthesis function, it has so far had its transforming effect in precisely a Memory role:storage, retrieval and communication of information. This is not to deny the importance of computation, it is only to claim that we use computation notprimarily to make computers creative but to automate procedures that would belong to the Interaction function; ICT in a Synthesis function is still in itsinfancy, and cannot by far account for its great transformative effect.

21 The human neural system belongs to the Interaction function of the biological KS but to the Synthesis function of sociocultural KS’s.



all, the neural system cannot possibly deal directly with its problem area. But this still meant that the trial-and-error thatthe internal vicarious system came to engage in as a part of its operation did not carry with it the risks and costs of whateverexternal trial-and-error that it would correspond to. What resulted was the opportunity to waste variation also internallyin a cheap and risk-free manner instead of externally where such variation would carry much greater risks or be impossiblealtogether. Because of this the adaptive neural system could perform trial-and-error on, and thereby achieve knowledgeof, things that otherwise would have incurred excessive (often absurdly excessive) amounts of time, risk, material andenergy.

This suits out purposes perfectly: we need an internal organizing principle if we are to be able to see how culture emergesfrom nature. From an explanatory point of view, the problem that we really must confront head-on is that socioculturalevolution (compared to for instance its biological counterpart) is a ghost town when it comes to variation. Embeddedvicarious KS is the rich arena of BVSR that, together with overt biological and sociocultural BVSR, lets us account for thewastefulness mandated by a naturalistic explanation of culture. But it is important to note once again that we have extendedthis principle to our routines and organizations as well. Very little overt variation22 can be seen around us and the moreadvanced and sophisticated the adaptation, the less variation there seems to be! The space shuttle is an example in point.There were not only too small populations (and too few generations) of real space shuttle variants around to externallyexplain their adaptedness to their task, there was not one single space shuttle around before one flew its first sharp mission.No overt selection at all operated on this device that must be seen as one of the pinnacles of human engineering. Yet, NASAwas quite confident that it would work,23 and work it did. It is not that NASA has magicians on its payroll, nor is it that theyare just incredibly lucky. It is that they are masters of designing elaborate organizations of vicarious KS embedded into theiroperation where a sufficient amount of waste can be afforded.

Organizations are more versatile than individual persons: since they organize autonomous persons they can operatein parallel, display a broader and deeper spectrum of abilities and channel more resources. They are also, like persons,dependent on solving problems of uncertain futures: solving problems that they have never before encountered, and to doso in competition with other organizations vying for the same resources. While we do not know with certainty how thebrain works, we should have much better chances of reconstructing how sociocultural organizations go about bargainingfor knowledge by embedding vicarious KS into their operations.

In their quest for knowledge, organizations implement tiered structures where variation is successively moved to highertiers with more expensive, specialized and realistic testing when it passes the selection in the lower tier. At the bottom tier,variation is filtered in the vicarious models of individual persons: we tend to think before we speak and we appreciate ifothers also do so. But eventually we must speak, and the thinking phase serves as a first round of selection. What remainsmay be introduced to colleagues, later to experiments, consultants, test groups, beta testing and so on. The organization,viewed as an embedded vicarious KS, in fact consists of a whole system of sub-systems that wholly or partly themselves areembedded vicarious KS, but that in any event contribute to the operation of the whole organization-system as a vicariousKS embedded in society, producing, much like human cognition, efficient novelty.

With their structure and function, this whole type of architecture seems to acknowledge (by being adapted to dealing with)both the need for blind variation – i.e. that if we want to make progress we must actually inject novelty that has to be tested– and the need to adapt to this basic constraint by ingeniously achieving efficiency and speed at the lowest cost possible. Buteven the most ingenious embedded vicarious KS can never hope to come close to eliminate the blindness from innovation.What emerges externally on the market “red in tooth and claw” (or similar arenas where the organization must prove itself)from these organizations does very much still contain important blindness, as modeled by e.g. (Nelson and Winter, 1982;Saviotti, 1996; Ziman, 2000). Internal and external BVSR in sociocultural evolution are both part of the same spectrum, theymake no sense on their own, and neither can be said to be more or less fundamental than the other. This non-diachronicdialectic quality of complex systems, where it is pointless to argue about what component has caused another component ismoreover quite typical of evolutionary dynamics generally and has been interpreted in many different ways; most directlyperhaps by Cziko (2000) with the concept of evolutionary causation, but it also appears centrally in many concepts relating toself-organization, such as Lane (2005) with sandwiched emergence and the cybernetic concept of autopoiesis (e.g. Maturanaand Varela, 1991).

5. The ISM perspective on some concepts

5.1. Memetics

Memetics is the fruit of a generalization and re-application of Dawkins’ view that Replicators have a privileged andunique role in Darwinian evolution: that it is only with a dedicated and faithfully reproduced Replicator that the con-stancy needed for efficacious adaptation can be fulfilled. Here we concur that constancy is needed (Memory) but claim

22 Diversity is great but variation in the Darwinian sense is not: it is diverse more in the sense of a museum of natural history than in the sense of a rainforest. This is not to claim that external Darwinian models of e.g. technology evolution are without merit. What is claimed is that as a general explanationfor sociocultural knowledge, the overt competition between variant “products” does not suffice by far.

23 Astronauts are seen as brave and daring but hardly as suicidal.



that replication is only one out of many ways to achieve Memory. The strong and evident specialization of genes to theirtask is thereby not a precondition of adaptation, but an outcome of adaptation to adaptability. Furthermore, the relativelack of gene-like entities in sociocultural evolution means that Memory is there served by other types of systems, notthat they are hiding really well. But it is important to keep in mind that memetics could play meaningful roles even ifwe can decide that it does not represent the fundamental principle of sociocultural evolution: it could still apply to caseswhere certain criteria are fulfilled. Some have thus delimited memetics by criteria concerning the Synthesis function, tosay that memetics concerns parts of culture that are what Crozier (2008) refers to as “unambiguously un-strategic” (i.e.lacking foresight). Furthermore, it has been argued that more systems than one might think could fall into this category(Hull, 2001; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2004, 2006). While this undeniably has some truth to it, the ISM model (see Section3) would predict that it is Memory criteria, not Synthesis criteria, that would best delimit memetics. The reason for thisis that Memory can be based on Replication even when Synthesis is not, and that this could be the more common andoften the more interesting situation in sociocultural evolution. The criterion becomes: is Memory realized as a replicatordynamics?

In a recent paper, Crozier (2010) investigates an adapting bird song dynamics that could be viewed as memetic. Thisillustrates both the fact that memetics could be useful in certain contexts and that it probably is not universally appli-cable. After all, the birds have hardly embarked on an open-ended evolutionary path with their meme system (at leastnot as far as we have reasons to suspect). A similar example from human culture that also illustrates how some ratherspecific and constraining conditions must be in place for memetic evolution to be possible, is proverbs. Proverbs tendto capture general and timeless types of situations and dilemmas in life that many (even most, often regardless of cul-tural background) can immediately verify and understand. The fitness of proverbs may perhaps be characterizable as anability to economically and somewhat poetically capture a common situation of significance. Those in possession of suchproverbs may easily recall the wisdom that they hold, ostensively display their possession of this wisdom and pass it onto others. Their poetic and economical qualities give them the appeal of being possible to use nimbly and to be remem-bered easily.24 That they apply abstractly to situations of a type that are unlikely to change much over time is likely nocoincidence; the fitness concept itself relies on the existence of a stable fitness landscape to which adaptation can occur.Hence, superficial situations that alter their character over time are unlikely to be honored with a proverb. Proverbs prob-ably evolve and even adapt while being maintained in a sociocultural replication Memory, although such a claim of coursewould warrant thorough research. But they remain catchy rather than agglomerating into philosophical systems. Philo-sophical systems, which may incorporate and relate to the type of wisdom maintained in proverbs, in fact emerged onlyas the institutions and Memory technologies that mark a departure from a reliance upon replication for Memory began toappear.

5.2. Routines and habits

The question of whether or not Memory is served by a replicator dynamics applies to Replicators more generally thanmemes. Several types of human knowledges are candidates for being carried by replication and they are not all of marginalimportance. Let us briefly consider routines, habits and tacit knowledge. The concepts of habits and routines (routines arebasically the habits of organizations) have been used in the study of organizations for quite sometime (Cohen et al., 1996)and the fact that they are often copied from agent to agent has made them attractive as potential sociocultural Replicators(Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010a). It even seems that we are neurally adapted to maintain a replicator dynamics of this sort(Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994). This capability of maintaining habits specifically allows us to store and execute patterns ofaction (including conditionals) without having to figure them out explicitly every time. It is easy to see how habits (likevirtually all human knowledge) will make short excursions as replicators, but why should they not be anchored in a morepersistent types of Memory? One reason of course would be if they are not compatible with other Memory systems. Many(although not all) habits and routines clearly belong to the sphere of tacit knowledge Polanyi (1967): it is by no means certainthat we can commit all habits and routines to external Memory media. Indeed, it is not even certain that we even registerthe existence of all habits and routines, many of them we see as just obvious patterns of action despite them not being at alluniversally obvious but the outcome of maybe a lifelong instruction and conditioning. Knowledge such as that has no choicebut to rely on agent-to-agent replication.

5.3. Lamarckism

Lamarckism is itself of questionable interest, but it nevertheless seems to be intuitively very attractive as a characteriza-tion of sociocultural evolution: sociocultural evolution just comes across as more Lamarckian than Darwinian. The reasonwhy Lamarckism is not very interesting is that it was never an explanation to begin with: it is the absence of an explanation.In biology it postulated an unknown internal process of adaptation that appears to be what was needed to fill the gapingholes in the evolutionary narrative. It furthermore seems that many have a dichotomic view of evolution where Darwinism

24 This of course also makes them attractive in print, such as in the Biblical Book of Proverbs. However, they clearly flourish also in analphabetic societiesso they do not critically rely on a written form.



and Lamarckism are the only two options on the menu: if you’re not getting Darwin, Lamarck is what you’re left with.Interesting or not, many pages have been devoted to Lamarckism and sociocultural evolution (see extensive discussion inHodgson and Knudsen, 2010a) and this in itself motivates an analysis.

Let us first ask why the inheritance of acquired traits is so preposterous as an explanation of organic adaptation? Why isit rejected and how universal are these reasons? The reasons can be sorted into two categories. (i) There are contingent andquite mundane reasons having to do with why such variation would practically find it hard to propagate between generations.In order to reach the whole organism (in particular to reach the germline and be heritable) variation must be propagated withthe developmental process, and this can happen only if variation is applied directly to germline cells. Otherwise variation(even if blind and not based on use-disuse or some such) will be isolated to, and die with, single somatic cells. (ii) If weimagine a sort of Lamarckian use/disuse scheme or otherwise some mechanisms changing heritable information based onlifetime interaction – we have the more lofty problem that such an intelligent apparatus is hard (to say the least) to imagine.

Why is Lamarckism then preposterous in sociocultural KS? Is it for the same reasons? We may note that the two killingarguments from biology do not apply here. The first category has to do with specifically biological processes and the secondcategory is much less problematic since we have embedded vicarious KS that can provide precisely this sort of service. Butthere is something that still makes Lamarckism apply even worse to sociocultural evolotion. Hodgson and Knudsen (2010a)note that Lamarckism relies on a well developed distinction between Replication and Interaction, and this is correct. Whatwe may stress here is that it also relies heavily on Replication, and in particular on Replication serving the Synthesis function.This is since Lamarckian inheritance of “acquired” traits clearly alludes to a period of time during which variation is deemedto be acquired as opposed to not acquired: variation in replication events is not acquired while variation between replicationevents is. Without replication events, when would variation be deemed to be acquired and when would it be deemed notto be? Apart from the fact that Lamarckism does not explain anything, it is this failure to apply ontologically that is the bigproblem with Lamarckism in sociocultural evolution: the distinction between acquired and not acquired traits makes nosense.

5.4. Generative replication

Hodgson and Knudsen (2008, 2010a) have recently introduced a new set of criteria to the already sprawling system ofcriteria that is to define what we should consider as a proper replicator. They call the entity that their new criteria define “thegenerative replicator”. Generative replicators must have “conditional generative mechanisms”. This means that they mustcarry instructions that direct the development of the interactor as a result of input signals containing information aboutthe environment. The friction that this new addition comes in response to is that with work emphasizing the etiologicaland developmental side of biology (see Griesemer, 1999; Griffiths and Gray, 1994; Szathmáry and Maynard-Smith, 1997;Wimsatt, 1999; Pelikan, 2011). The lesson that they wish to take to heart is that the link between the Replicator and theInteractor is of great importance: both are functionally specialized but in isolation they would be pointless, so we must addthe criteria that they should be a part of what we here refer to as a KS.

In terms of the ISM ontology, generative replication in itself is of course something that can only be relevant where wein fact have replication as a dominant mechanism, and the replicators that Hodgson and Knudsen wish to expel by theirdefinition, we would simply say belong to the Interaction function. But what would it then mean if we take the same lessonto heart in the ISM framework? If we have a KS where indeed we can with good conscience speak about Replicators, weconcur that these do ought to be generative in the sense of Hodgson and Knudsen. This means that the functions may besplit up, but they must all work together in a system in a particular way. Development in this sense deals specifically withthe case where we have I + SM with the latter combining into replication so that we have I + R: development is so to speakthe glue that ties interaction and replication together. But what if we have other permutations, as we can have in the ISMframework? Often in the social world we will have I + S + M, a schematic example would simply be an artifact, a human and abook. We would then need additional and analogous “glue theories” also between other functions (although not necessarilybetween all functions, as the system does not necessarily have to be fully connected). We can imagine that we would at leasthave such an analogue to development between Synthesis and Memory, so what would such a process contain? We wouldneed to ask what it is that makes sociocultural Memory function as a Memory relative to the other functions? There is noroom here to pursue this question, but it is easy to identify such mechanisms at least on a high level: we need to search,retrieve and transmit information and so on, and we do direct substantial resources and innovation efforts to such activities.

Acknowledgement

The work was performed as a part of the EC FP7 project INSITE (271574) and financially supported by grant P32079-1from the Swedish Energy Agency.

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Splitting the replicator: generalized Darwinism and the place of culture in Nature

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