Is Culture Alive?
From Mozart to Madonna, dim sum to doughnuts, Shakespeare to Sartre – not all forms of life need DNA
TL;DR
- Culture is argued to be a second, literal form of life, separate from biological life, based on the transmission of information.
- Biological life encodes, processes, and transmits information through genes (DNA), while culture does so through social learning and language.
- Cultural innovations, such as tool-making and fire control, drove hominin evolution, leading to changes in jaw size, teeth, guts, and brain size.
- Language was a critical development that allowed for faster, more accurate, and more faithful transmission of cultural information, leading to 'viral' culture.
- The positive feedback between language, culture, and neurological hardware created sophisticated human brains capable of acquiring and producing language.
- Cultural evolution has diversified wildly, creating different religions, arts, farming systems, and civilizations, accelerating away from minimal genetic differences between populations.
- The emergence of machines capable of writing their own code suggests a potential third form of life and evolution may be beginning.