Cultural Systems

Abstract Many cultural phenomena cannot be understood by studying traits in isolation. Instead, they are embedded in webs of relations, layered with rich social meaning, and sequentially acquired and evaluated, filtered, in light of previously acquired traits. Incorporating multiple traits and their relations is needed to understand the organization, dynamics, and emergent products of cultural evolution. This chapter argues that a systems approach offers the potential for: (i) a more thorough understanding of the source and character of emergent phenomena, crucial for understanding the origin and historical development of culture; (ii) an increased scope of cultural evolution, whereby faithful transmission, self-organization and filtering of culture can be accounted for by systems dynamics, without the need for strong assumptions about innate machinery; and (iii) a more robust theoretical connection between cultural evolution and processes of development as they are studied in developmental psychology and related fields.