Cultural evolution, kate Distin

Cultural Evolution
In this book, Kate Distin proposes a theory of cultural evolution and shows
how it can help us understand the origin and development of human culture.
Distin introduces the concept that humans share information not only
in natural languages, which are spoken or signed, but also in artefactual languages
like writing and musical notation, which use media that are made by
humans. Languages enable humans to receive and transmit variations in cultural
information and resources. In this way, they provide the mechanism for
cultural evolution. The human capacity for metarepresentation – thinking
about how we think – accelerates cultural evolution, because it frees cultural
information from the conceptual limitations of each individual language.
Distin shows how the concept of cultural evolution outlined in this book
can help us understand the complexity and diversity of human culture, relating
her theory to a range of subjects including economics, linguistics and
developmental biology.
Kate Distin was educated at Cambridge University and the University of
Sheffield. She is the author of The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment (Cambridge,
2005) and the editor of the award-winning Gifted Children: A Guide
for Parents and Professionals (2006).