Peter J. Richerson

Slogged through about 4/7 of this (the first half, the last chapter lightly). Despite the fact that the authors kept saying 'intuition is wrong' everything I could manage to glean did sound like common sense. They kept defining terminology, but not in a way that I could make sense of. The nits they picked seemed like imaginary ones to me....

I mean, does anyone really say otherwise than what they claim (by chapter titles) that culture is essential, exists, evolves, is an adaptation, is show more maladaptive, and coevolves with genes? The last chapter, "Nothing about culture makes sense except in the light of evolution" could be seen to be a little bit provocative given it's apparent contrast with the title of the book, but to me everything seemed to be only a trivial matter of ivory tower semantic BS.

I guess academia does tend to create specialists, and any prof. who thinks beyond the confines of his or niche thinks that their thoughts are revolutionary. However, if the authors read popular science, or literature, or looked around the world at real people, they'd realize that no matter what fancy words you use to frame it, the question remains the same. How do nature and nurture interact upon each other, the individual, the population, the species, and (what this book apparently didn't consider) the world?

And ultimately that's all Richerson and Boyd apparently did. They defined the question, using analyses of field work and experience from mostly other researchers, and justified it. But they didn't even attempt an answer; every guess they made they qualified with "more study needed."

I did use one book dart, which perfectly illustrates the authors' tendency to hazard guesses:
"Little Phyllis apparently abhors Democrats partly because she inherited genes from her parents that predispose her to adopt conservative views...." show less

When Boyd and Richerson wrote this book there was very little available in the way of a comprehensive yet technical treatment of cultural evolution.

EBSCO e-text so long as I know a college student...