Title: Why a Population Genetics Framework is Inappropriate for Cultural Evolution,
Abstract: Although Darwinian models are rampant in the social sciences, social
scientists do not face the problem that motivated Darwin's theory of natural
selection: the problem of explaining how lineages evolve despite that any
traits they acquire are regularly discarded at the end of the lifetime of the
individuals that acquired them. While the rationale for framing culture as an
evolutionary process is correct, it does not follow that culture is a Darwinian
or selectionist process, or that population genetics and phylogenetics provide
viable starting points for modeling cultural change. This paper lays out
step-by-step arguments as to why this approach is ill-conceived, focusing on
the lack of randomness and lack of a self-assembly code in cultural evolution,
and summarizes an alternative approach.