What Does Disciplinary Structure Tell Us About Science? The Case of Cultural Evolution
(2026) Philosophy and History of Science and Technology, TU Münich — Location: Münich, Germany (14.May.2026)
Files
2026_CE_Munich.pdf
Open Access - Adobe PDF
- 3.65 MB
Details
- Authors
- Abstract
- The study of cultural evolution has long been understood to be an unusual one. In particular, it has never been clear what exactly it is (if anything) that unites the study of cultural evolution, other than a commitment to “biological” or “Darwinian” explanations for the spread or distribution human cultural traits. A recent bibliometric analysis of the literature in cultural evolution revealed a fragmentation of the field into relatively distinct clusters, corresponding to biological anthropology and archaeology, mathematical modeling and dual-inheritance theory, cognitive linguistics and experimental cultural evolution, cross-cultural and phylogenetic studies, computational biology and cultural niche construction, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral ecology and birdsong (Youngblood and Lahti 2018). Such a conclusion seems to indicate profound splits with regard both to content and to methodology. What lesson should philosophers of science take away from this fragmented landscape? The discussion of a connection between the structure of the literature in a field, the underlying nature of the discipline that structure indicates, and the epistemic characteristics of the resulting knowledge finds some precedent in the literature. Particularly notable examples include Alan Love’s (2014) study of textbooks in developmental biology, and Truc et al.’s (2023) exploration of the (lack of) interdisciplinary indicated by the central journals in economics. Sometimes (like in Love’s analysis) this seems to give us indication that there is something, after all, which unifies the field (like Love’s proposed erotetic structure for developmental biology); other times (like in Truc et al.’s case) apparent unity might come with significant epistemic costs. What could such an analysis teach us about cultural evolution? Here, empirical methods would have to look farther afield, as there is no body of textbooks or of central journals to which we can appeal. In this paper, we propose to explore the impact of cultural evolution’s fragmented structure on work performed under its banner. A study of a corpus of articles both within and beyond cultural evolution allows us to speak toward existing efforts to articulate a unified framework for cultural evolution (e.g., Mesoudi 2011). It also, we claim, will allow us to explore how this structure influences the relationship between cultural evolution and allied fields, as well as whether the “archipelagic” structure (following Panofsky 2014) that Youngblood and Lahti saw among cultural evolution’s authors is duplicated in the field’s conceptual content. More broadly, the case can teach us lessons about how to diagnose theories that, like cultural evolution, are actively in the process of being formed, debated, and changed.
- Affiliations
Citations
Pence, C. H. (2026, May 14). What Does Disciplinary Structure Tell Us About Science? The Case of Cultural Evolution. Philosophy and History of Science and Technology, TU Münich, Münich, Germany. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280805