Cultural Evolution - By Means of Natural and Artefactual Languages

Informationen zum Autor Kate Distin was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Sheffield. She is the author of The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and the editor of the award-winning Gifted Children: A Guide for Parents and Professionals (2006). Klappentext Expounds a theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the development of human culture. Zusammenfassung Presents a range of evidence for the theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the origin and development of human culture. This book introduces a new distinction between natural and artefactual languages and argues that human languages are the mechanism of cultural inheritance. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Introduction: small consequences of one general law; Part I. The Inheritance of Cultural Information: 2. What is information?; 3. How is information inherited?; Part II. The Inheritance of Cultural Information: Natural Language: 4. Natural language and culture: the biological building blocks; 5. How did natural language evolve?; 6. Language, thought, and culture; Part III. In Inheritance of Cultural Information: Artefactual Language: 7. How did artefactual language evolve?; 8. Artefactual language, representation and culture; 9. Money: an artefactual language; 10. Money: the explanatory power of artefactual languages; Part III. The Receivers of Cultural Information: 11. How does human diversity affect cultural evolution?; Part IV. The Expression of Cultural Information: 12. Aspects of the cultural ecology; 13. Patterns of cultural taxonomy; 14. Conclusion: a representational understanding of cultural evolution; Appendix: what about memetics?

Product details

• Authors: Kate Distin, Distin Kate
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2010
• EAN: 9780521769013
• ISBN: 978-0-521-76901-3
• No. of pages: 282
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative linguistics; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Cultural Studies, Evolution, SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects, Philosophy of Science, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Psycholinguistics, Psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics