D.S. Wilson tries to extend group selection to cultural evolution

This looks to be a howler.

Wilson, who along with non-relative E.O. Wilson, tried to turd-polish group selection in evolutionary biology by linking it with traditional genetic selection under the moniker of multi-level selection, is now trying to apply it to cultural evolution.

The biological evolution of individual humans itself is less a driver of cultural evolution than are non-biological changes in human societies. To the degree that group selection on the biological side has some small bit of reality, it obviously would be a small bit of the minority half of biological influences on cultural evolution.

But, apparently DS has a new book to sell. That's all about this.

At least, that appears to be the case in a recent exchange of online letters between him and Massimo Pigliucci, which starts with Massimo's response to Wilson's original, which is above it. Massimo politely torpedoes him.

And I snarkily piled on, on Massimo's Facebook page.

 I didn't know that D.S. Wilson had been trying to apply group selection aka multi-level selection to cultural evolution. And, of COURSE there's a new book attached to it. 

Second snarky comment. Is putting "evolutionary" in front of all sorts of ideas and fields kind of like doing the same with "neuro-"? 

And I smell a blog post coming on ... :) 

I think it's going to be about multi-level evolutionary neurobiology. 

And, does Wilson have any algorithms for this?

(Had to throw Dennett under the bus, too.)

More seriously, Wilson does sound like the neuro-faddists.

Wilson is a kind of odd duck in other ways. He rejects most of the Tooby-Cosmides central theorums of evolutionary psychology while still apparently believing in something like it.

That said, OTOH, I think I accept that evolutionary biology has more influence on average human psychological traits than Massimo does, albeit less than Wilson does.

Because of this, and contra his hint that Tooby-Cosmides might be a minority view, while I'll use the more clunky "evolutionary-biology based psychological development" or something like that, the phrase "evolutionary psychology" is poisoned fruit. So is "sociobiology," again contra D.S. — and E.O.

As for Wilson touting his ideas of the evolutionary development of religion? No soap. I'll take Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran ahead of you any day.

And, that leads us back to the original.

Pace Massimo, the claim that one can find different group levels to study in exegesis of history is laughable.

Or tohu wevohu, per Genesis 1.

Or empty and cognitively meaningless, per logical positivism.

I mean, there are different schools of history, like Great Man, economic, etc., but ...

BUT ...

First, most of them aren't that exclusive; they cross-pollinate and aren't separately selected for.

Second, Wilson doesn't even explain what group selection would be like in cultural evolution, at least not from what he writes Massimo. That's the cognitively meaningless part.

Third, as Massimo points out, Wilson offers no explanatory power, nor testable hypotheses.