Universal darwinism
Encyclopedia
Universal Darwinism refers to a variety of approaches that extend the theory of Darwinism
beyond its original domain of biological evolution
on Earth. The idea is to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation
, selection
and heredity
proposed by Charles Darwin
, so that they can be applied to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, economics, culture, medicine, computer science and physics.
's theory of evolution
states that organisms evolve and adapt
to their environment by an iterative process. This process can be conceived as an evolutionary algorithm
that searches the space of possible forms (the fitness landscape
) for the one that are best adapted. The process has three components:
After those fit variants are retained, they can again undergo variation, either directly or in their offspring, starting a new round of the iteration
. The overall mechanism is similar to the problem-solving procedures of trial-and-error or generate-and-test: evolution can be seen as searching for the best solution for the problem of how to survive and reproduce.
The generalization made in "universal" Darwinism is to replace "organism" by any recognizable pattern, phenomenon, or system. The first requirement is that the pattern can "survive" (maintain, be retained) long enough or "reproduce" (replicate, be copied) sufficiently frequently so as not to disappear immediately. This is the inheritance component: the information in the pattern must be retained or passed on. The second requirement is that during survival and reproduction variation (small changes in the pattern) can occur. The final requirement is that there is a selective "preference" so that certain variants tend to survive or reproduce "better" than others. If these conditions are met, then, by the logic of natural selection, the pattern will evolve towards more adapted forms.
Examples of patterns that have been postulated to undergo variation and selection, and thus adaptation, are genes
, ideas (memes), neurons and their connections, words, computer programs, firms, antibodies, institutions, quantum states and even whole universes.
, Thorstein Veblen
, James Mark Baldwin
and William James
, was quick to apply the idea of selection to other domains, such as language, psychology, society, and culture. However, this evolutionary tradition was largely banned from the social sciences in the beginning of the 20th century, in part because of the bad reputation of Social Darwinism
, an attempt to use Darwinism to justify social inequality.
Starting in the 1950s, Donald T. Campbell
was one of the first and most influential authors to revive the tradition, and to formulate a generalized Darwinian algorithm
directly applicable to phenomena outside of biology. In this, he was inspired by William Ross Ashby
's view of self-organization
and intelligence as fundamental processes of selection. His aim was to explain the development of science
and other forms of knowledge
by focusing on the variation and selection of ideas and theories, thus laying the basis for the domain of evolutionary epistemology
. In the 1990s, Campbell's formulation of the mechanism of "blind-variation-and-selective-retention" (BVSR) was further developed and extended to other domains under the labels of "universal selection theory" or "universal selectionism" by his disciples Gary Cziko, Mark Bickhard, and Francis Heylighen
.
Richard Dawkins
may have first coined the term "universal Darwinism" in 1983 to describe his conjecture that any possible life forms existing outside the solar system would evolve by natural selection just as they do on Earth. Henry Plotkin in his 1997 book on Darwin Machines
makes the link between universal Darwinism and Campbell's evolutionary epistemology. Susan Blackmore
, in her 1999 book The Meme Machine
, devotes a chapter titled 'Universal Darwinism' to a discussion of the applicability of the Darwinian process to a wide range of scientific subject matters.
The philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett
, in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea
, developed the idea of a Darwinian process, involving variation, selection and retention, as a generic algorithm that is substrate-neutral and could be applied to many fields of knowledge outside of biology. He described the idea of natural selection as a "universal acid" that cannot be contained in any vessel, as it seeps through the walls and spreads ever further, touching and transforming ever more domains. He notes in particular the field of memetics
in the social sciences.
In agreement with Dennett's prediction, over the past decades the Darwinian perspective has spread ever more widely, in particular across the social sciences
as the foundation for numerous schools of study including memetics
, evolutionary economics
, evolutionary psychology
, evolutionary anthropology
, neural Darwinism
, and evolutionary linguistics
. Researchers have postulated Darwinian processes as operating at the foundations of physics, cosmology and chemistry via the theories of Quantum Darwinism
and cosmological natural selection. Similar mechanisms are extensively applied in computer science
in the domains of genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation
, which develop solutions to complex problems via a process of variation and selection.
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
beyond its original domain of biological evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
on Earth. The idea is to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation
Variation
- Physics :* Magnetic variation, difference between magnetic north and true north, measured as an angle* Variation , any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon- Mathematics :* Bounded variation...
, selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and heredity
Heredity
Heredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
proposed by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, so that they can be applied to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, economics, culture, medicine, computer science and physics.
Basic Mechanisms
At the most fundamental level, Charles DarwinCharles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's theory of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
states that organisms evolve and adapt
ADAPT
ADAPT is a grassroots United States disability rights organization with chapters in 30 states. It is known for being part of the militant wing of the disability rights movement due to its history of nonviolent direct action in order to bring attention to the lack of civil rights the disability...
to their environment by an iterative process. This process can be conceived as an evolutionary algorithm
Evolutionary algorithm
In artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. An EA uses some mechanisms inspired by biological evolution: reproduction, mutation, recombination, and selection...
that searches the space of possible forms (the fitness landscape
Fitness landscape
In evolutionary biology, fitness landscapes or adaptive landscapes are used to visualize the relationship between genotypes and reproductive success. It is assumed that every genotype has a well-defined replication rate . This fitness is the "height" of the landscape...
) for the one that are best adapted. The process has three components:
- variationVariation- Physics :* Magnetic variation, difference between magnetic north and true north, measured as an angle* Variation , any perturbation of the mean motion or orbit of a planet or satellite, particularly of the moon- Mathematics :* Bounded variation...
of a given form or template. This is usually (but not necessarily) considered to be blind or random, and happens typically by mutationMutationIn molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
or recombinationGenetic recombinationGenetic recombination is a process by which a molecule of nucleic acid is broken and then joined to a different one. Recombination can occur between similar molecules of DNA, as in homologous recombination, or dissimilar molecules, as in non-homologous end joining. Recombination is a common method...
. - selectionSelectionIn the context of evolution, certain traits or alleles of genes segregating within a population may be subject to selection. Under selection, individuals with advantageous or "adaptive" traits tend to be more successful than their peers reproductively—meaning they contribute more offspring to the...
of the fittestFitnessFitness may relate to:* Physical fitness, a general state of good health, usually as a result of exercise and nutrition * Cardiorespiratory fitness...
variants, i.e. those that are best suited to survive and reproduce in their given environment. The unfit variants are eliminated. - heredityHeredityHeredity is the passing of traits to offspring . This is the process by which an offspring cell or organism acquires or becomes predisposed to the characteristics of its parent cell or organism. Through heredity, variations exhibited by individuals can accumulate and cause some species to evolve...
or retention, meaning that the features of the fit variants are retained and passed on, e.g. in offspring.
After those fit variants are retained, they can again undergo variation, either directly or in their offspring, starting a new round of the iteration
Iteration
Iteration means the act of repeating a process usually with the aim of approaching a desired goal or target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an "iteration," and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.-Mathematics:Iteration in...
. The overall mechanism is similar to the problem-solving procedures of trial-and-error or generate-and-test: evolution can be seen as searching for the best solution for the problem of how to survive and reproduce.
The generalization made in "universal" Darwinism is to replace "organism" by any recognizable pattern, phenomenon, or system. The first requirement is that the pattern can "survive" (maintain, be retained) long enough or "reproduce" (replicate, be copied) sufficiently frequently so as not to disappear immediately. This is the inheritance component: the information in the pattern must be retained or passed on. The second requirement is that during survival and reproduction variation (small changes in the pattern) can occur. The final requirement is that there is a selective "preference" so that certain variants tend to survive or reproduce "better" than others. If these conditions are met, then, by the logic of natural selection, the pattern will evolve towards more adapted forms.
Examples of patterns that have been postulated to undergo variation and selection, and thus adaptation, are genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
, ideas (memes), neurons and their connections, words, computer programs, firms, antibodies, institutions, quantum states and even whole universes.
History and Development
Conceptually, "evolutionary theorizing about cultural, social, and economic phenomena" preceded Darwin, but was still lacking the concept of natural selection. Darwin himself, together with subsequent 19th century thinkers such as Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
, Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...
, James Mark Baldwin
James Mark Baldwin
James Mark Baldwin was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at the university...
and William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
, was quick to apply the idea of selection to other domains, such as language, psychology, society, and culture. However, this evolutionary tradition was largely banned from the social sciences in the beginning of the 20th century, in part because of the bad reputation of Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, an attempt to use Darwinism to justify social inequality.
Starting in the 1950s, Donald T. Campbell
Donald T. Campbell
Donald Thomas Campbell was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term "evolutionary epistemology" and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity.- Biography :...
was one of the first and most influential authors to revive the tradition, and to formulate a generalized Darwinian algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
directly applicable to phenomena outside of biology. In this, he was inspired by William Ross Ashby
William Ross Ashby
W. Ross Ashby was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His first name was not used: he was known as Ross Ashby....
's view of self-organization
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
and intelligence as fundamental processes of selection. His aim was to explain the development of science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and other forms of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
by focusing on the variation and selection of ideas and theories, thus laying the basis for the domain of evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology
Evolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
. In the 1990s, Campbell's formulation of the mechanism of "blind-variation-and-selective-retention" (BVSR) was further developed and extended to other domains under the labels of "universal selection theory" or "universal selectionism" by his disciples Gary Cziko, Mark Bickhard, and Francis Heylighen
Francis Heylighen
Francis Paul Heylighen is a Belgian cyberneticist, and research professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking Free University of Brussels, where he directs the transdisciplinary research group on "Evolution, Complexity and Cognition".-Biography:Francis Heylighen was born on...
.
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
may have first coined the term "universal Darwinism" in 1983 to describe his conjecture that any possible life forms existing outside the solar system would evolve by natural selection just as they do on Earth. Henry Plotkin in his 1997 book on Darwin Machines
Darwin Machine
A Darwin machine is a machine that, like a Turing machine, involves an iteration process that yields a high-quality result, but, whereas a Turing machine uses logic, the Darwin machine uses rounds of variation, selection, and inheritance.In its original connotation, a Darwin machine is any process...
makes the link between universal Darwinism and Campbell's evolutionary epistemology. Susan Blackmore
Susan Blackmore
Susan Jane Blackmore is an English freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster on psychology and the paranormal, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine.-Career:...
, in her 1999 book The Meme Machine
The Meme Machine
The Meme Machine is a popular science book by psychologist Susan Blackmore on the subject of memes. Blackmore attempts to constitute memetics as a science by discussing its empirical and analytic potential, as well as some important problems with memetics. The first half of the book tries to...
, devotes a chapter titled 'Universal Darwinism' to a discussion of the applicability of the Darwinian process to a wide range of scientific subject matters.
The philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
, in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life is a book by Daniel Dennett which argues that Darwinian processes are the central organizing force that gives rise to complexity...
, developed the idea of a Darwinian process, involving variation, selection and retention, as a generic algorithm that is substrate-neutral and could be applied to many fields of knowledge outside of biology. He described the idea of natural selection as a "universal acid" that cannot be contained in any vessel, as it seeps through the walls and spreads ever further, touching and transforming ever more domains. He notes in particular the field of memetics
Memetics
Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
in the social sciences.
In agreement with Dennett's prediction, over the past decades the Darwinian perspective has spread ever more widely, in particular across the social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
as the foundation for numerous schools of study including memetics
Memetics
Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
, evolutionary economics
Evolutionary economics
Evolutionary economics is part of mainstream economics as well as heterodox school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology...
, evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
, evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science...
, neural Darwinism
Neural Darwinism
Neural Darwinism, a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978, in a book called The Mindful Brain...
, and evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics
Evolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: spoken language leaves practically no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century...
. Researchers have postulated Darwinian processes as operating at the foundations of physics, cosmology and chemistry via the theories of Quantum Darwinism
Quantum darwinism
Quantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection; where the many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state. It is proposed by Wojciech Zurek and a group of...
and cosmological natural selection. Similar mechanisms are extensively applied in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
in the domains of genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation
Evolutionary computation
In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
, which develop solutions to complex problems via a process of variation and selection.
Examples of Universal Darwinist theories
The following approaches can all be seen as exemplifying a generalization of Darwinian ideas outside of their original domain of biology. These "Darwinian extensions" can be grouped in two categories, depending on whether they discuss implications of biological (genetic) evolution in other disciplines (e.g. medicine or psychology), or discuss processes of variation and selection of entities other than genes (e.g. computer programs, firms or ideas). However, there is no strict separation possible, since most of these approaches (e.g. in sociology, psychology and linguistics) consider both genetic and non-genetic (e.g. cultural) aspects of evolution, as well as the interactions between them (see e.g. gene-culture coevolution).Gene-based Darwinian extensions
- Evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
assumes that our emotions, preferences and cognitive mechanisms are the product of natural selection - Evolutionary educational psychologyEvolutionary educational psychologyEvolutionary educational psychology is the study of the relation between inherent folk knowledge and abilities and accompanying inferential and attributional biases as these influence academic learning in evolutionarily novel cultural contexts, such as schools and the industrial workplace...
applies evolutionary psychology to education - Evolutionary developmental psychologyEvolutionary developmental psychologyEvolutionary developmental psychology, , is the application of the basic principles of Darwinian evolution, particularly natural selection, to explain contemporary human development...
applies evolutionary psychology to cognitive development - Darwinian HappinessDarwinian HappinessDarwinian Happiness: Evolution As a Guide for Living and Understanding Human Behavior, ISBN 0-87850-159-2, is a 2002 book by the Norwegian biologist Bjørn Grinde from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health...
applies evolutionary psychology to understand the optimal conditions for human well-being - Darwinian literary studiesDarwinian literary studiesDarwinian Literary Studies is a branch of literary criticism that studies literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection, including gene-culture coevolution...
tries to understand the characters and plots of narrative on the basis of evolutionary psychology - Evolutionary anthropologyEvolutionary anthropologyEvolutionary anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates. Evolutionary anthropology is based in natural science and social science...
studies the evolution of human beings - SociobiologySociobiologySociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...
proposes that social systems in animals and humans are the product of Darwinian evolution - Human behavioral ecologyHuman behavioral ecologyHuman behavioral ecology or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. HBE examines the adaptive design of traits, behaviors, and life histories of humans in an ecological context...
investigates how human behavior has become adapted to its environment via variation and selection - Evolutionary epistemologyEvolutionary epistemologyEvolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
of mechanisms studies how our abilities to gather knowledge (perception, cognition) have evolved - Darwinian medicine investigates the origin of diseases by looking at the evolution both of the human body and of its parasites
- Paleolithic dietPaleolithic dietThe modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet , also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various hominid species habitually consumed during the...
proposes that the most healthy nutrition is the one to which our hunter-gatherer ancestors have adapted over millions of years - Paleolithic lifestylePaleolithic lifestyleA paleolithic lifestyle refers to living as humans did in the paleolithic era , or attempting to recreate such a lifestyle in the present day. The rationale for such an approach is that humans have evolved for millions of years in a paleolithic environment...
generalizes the paleolithic diet to include exercise, behavior and exposure to the environment - Molecular evolutionMolecular evolutionMolecular evolution is in part a process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as researchers from molecular biology, evolutionary biology and population genetics sought to understand recent discoveries on the structure...
studies evolution at the level of DNA, RNA and proteins
Other Darwinian extensions
- Quantum darwinismQuantum darwinismQuantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian natural selection; where the many possible quantum states are selected against in favor of a stable pointer state. It is proposed by Wojciech Zurek and a group of...
sees the emergence of classical states in physics as a natural selection of the most stable quantum properties - Cosmological natural selection hypothesizes that universes reproduce and are selected for having fundamental constants that maximize "fitness"
- Complex adaptive systems models the dynamics of complex systems in part on the basis of the variation and selection of its components
- Evolutionary computationEvolutionary computationIn computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
is a Darwinian approach to the generation of adapted computer programs - Genetic algorithms, a subset of evolutionary computation, models variation by "genetic" operators (mutation and recombination)
- Evolutionary roboticsEvolutionary roboticsEvolutionary robotics is a methodology that uses evolutionary computation to develop controllers for autonomous robots. Algorithms in ER frequently operate on populations of candidate controllers, initially selected from some distribution. This population is then repeatedly modified according to...
applies Darwinian algorithms to the design of autonomous robots - Artificial LifeArtificial lifeArtificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
uses Darwinian algorithms to let organism-like computer agents evolve in a software simulation - Evolutionary artEvolutionary artEvolutionary art is created using a computer. The process starts by having a population of many randomly generated individual representations of artworks. Each representation is evaluated for its aesthetic value and given a fitness score...
uses variation and selection to produce works of art - Clonal selection theory sees the creation of adapted antibodies in the immune system as a process of variation and selection
- Neural darwinismNeural DarwinismNeural Darwinism, a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978, in a book called The Mindful Brain...
proposes that neurons and their synapses are selectively pruned during brain development - Evolutionary epistemologyEvolutionary epistemologyEvolutionary epistemology refers to two distinct topics - on the one hand, the biological evolution of cognitive mechanisms in animals and humans, and on the other hand, a theory in that knowledge itself evolves by natural selection....
of theories assumes that scientific theories develop through variation and selection - MemeticsMemeticsMemetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It purports to be an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. A meme, analogous to a gene, is essentially a "unit of...
is a theory of the variation, transmission and selection of cultural items, such as ideas, fashions, and traditions - Cultural selection theoryCultural selection theoryCultural selection theory is a scientific discipline that explores sociological and cultural evolution the same way that Darwinian selection theory is used to explain biological evolution....
is a theory of cultural evolution related to memetics - Evolutionary linguisticsEvolutionary linguisticsEvolutionary linguistics is the scientific study of the origins and development of language. The main challenge in this research is the lack of empirical data: spoken language leaves practically no traces. This led to an abandonment of the field for more than a century...
studies the evolution of language, biologically as well as culturally - Evolutionary economicsEvolutionary economicsEvolutionary economics is part of mainstream economics as well as heterodox school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology...
views competition between firms and institutions as a process of "survival of the fittest"