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  1. Navigating the Evolvability Landscape — Essay Review of Hansen T.F., Houle, D., Pavlicev, M., & Pelabon, C. (Eds.). (2023). Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology? MIT Press. [REVIEW]David Chun Yin Li - 2024 - Biosemiotics 17 (1):257-263.
    This article reviews the edited volume “Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology?” through biological and philosophical lenses. The book provides diverse angles on evolvability, which is affected by various hierarchical levels, timescales, and types of variation, thus moving beyond a purely genomics perspective. Evolvability is important to biosemiotics because understanding the dynamics of topological genotype spaces could help one better comprehend the phenotypic spaces of meaning, as developmental codes and interrelations can influence the emergence of biological novelty over time. (...)
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  • Cultural evolution in Vietnam’s early 20th century: a Bayesian networks analysis of Hanoi Franco-Chinese house designs.Quan-Hoang Vuong, Quang-Khiem Bui, Viet-Phuong La, Thu-Trang Vuong, Manh-Toan Ho, Hong-Kong T. Nguyen, Hong-Ngoc Nguyen, Kien-Cuong P. Nghiem & Manh-Tung Ho - 2019 - Social Sciences and Humanities Open 1 (1):100001.
    The study of cultural evolution has taken on an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse approach in explicating phenomena of cultural transmission and adoptions. Inspired by this computational movement, this study uses Bayesian networks analysis, combining both the frequentist and the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, to investigate the highly representative elements in the cultural evolution of a Vietnamese city’s architecture in the early 20th century. With a focus on the façade design of 68 old houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (...)
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  • 'People of celebrity' as a new social stratum and elite.Leonid Grinin - 2009 - In Leonid Grinin & Andrey Korotayev (eds.), Hierarchy and Power in the History of Civilizations: Cultural Dimensions. Moscow: KRASAND.
    However, strange though it may seem, personal celebrity (as well as fame, popularity etc.) is hardly included in the list of those resources. This happens despite the increasing role of this phenome-non in modern life and the fact that the aspiration for it affects value aims of a growing number of people. What is more, it begins to influence the changes of social relations and stratification. The subject of the present article is the investigation of the influence of the personal (...)
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  • The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?Thomas Suddendorf & Michael C. Corballis - 2007 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (3):299-313.
    In a dynamic world, mechanisms allowing prediction of future situations can provide a selective advantage. We suggest that memory systems differ in the degree of flexibility they offer for anticipatory behavior and put forward a corresponding taxonomy of prospection. The adaptive advantage of any memory system can only lie in what it contributes for future survival. The most flexible is episodic memory, which we suggest is part of a more general faculty of mental time travel that allows us not only (...)
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  • Has mental time travel really affected human culture?Alex Mesoudi - 2007 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (3):326-327.
    Suddendorf & Corballis (S&C) claim that mental time travel has significantly affected human cultural change. This echoes a common criticism of theories of Darwinian cultural evolution: that, whereas evolution is blind, culture is directed by people who can foresee and plan for future events. Here I argue that such a claim is premature, and more rigorous tests of S&C's claim are needed.
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  • Our evolving beliefs about evolved misbelief.Ryan T. McKay & Daniel C. Dennett - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):541.
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  • On the adaptive advantage of always being right (even when one is not).Nathalia L. Gjersoe & Bruce M. Hood - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):521-522.
    We propose another positive illusion that fits with McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children's developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual.
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  • Early State and Democracy.Leonid Grinin - 2004 - In Leonid Grinin, Robert Carneiro, Dmitri Bondarenko, Nikolay Kradin & Andrey Korotayev (eds.), The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues. ‘Uchitel’ Publishing House. pp. 419--463.
    The present article is devoted to the problem which is debated actively to-day, namely whether Greek poleis and the Roman Republic were early states or they represented a specific type of stateless societies. In particular, Moshe Berent examines this problem by the example of Athens in his contribution to this volume. He arrives at the conclusion that Athens was a stateless society. However, I am of the opinion that this conclusion is wrong: and I believe that Athens and Rome were (...)
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  • False beliefs and naive beliefs: They can be good for you.Roberto Casati & Marco Bertamini - 2009 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6):512-513.
    Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.
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  • Aromorphoses in Biological and Social Evolution: Some General Rules for Biological and Social Forms of Macroevolution.Leonid Grinin, Alexander Markov, Markov & Andrey Korotayev - 2009 - Social Evolution and History 8 (2).
    The comparison between biological and social macroevolution is a very important (though insufficiently studied) subject whose analysis renders new significant possibilities to comprehend the processes, trends, mechanisms, and peculiarities of each of the two types of macroevolution. Of course, there are a few rather important (and very understandable) differences between them; however, it appears possible to identify a number of fundamental similarities. One may single out at least three fundamental sets of factors determining those similarities. First of all, those similarities (...)
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  • (1 other version)Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems.Hannah Cornish - 2010 - Interaction Studies 11 (1):112-137.
    Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single (...)
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