Nature and culture revisited: What do neo-Darwinism and developmental systems theory have to say? Cover Image

Priroda i kultura, još jednom: šta neodarvinizam i teorija razvojnih sistema imaju da kažu?
Nature and culture revisited: What do neo-Darwinism and developmental systems theory have to say?

Author(s): Aleksandra Knežević
Subject(s): Anthropology, History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Social Theory, Sociobiology
Published by: Институт за етнологију и антропологију
Keywords: nature/culture; sociobiology; neo-Darwinism; Tim Ingold; cultural determinism; hard inheritance; Developmental Systems Theory;

Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I deal with the conceptual relationship between nature and culture in Lamarckism, Darwinism, sociobiology, neo-Darwinism, and developmental systems theory. The paper aims to show how sociobiology deviates from what is postulated about this relationship in neo-Darwinism. Namely, thanks to August Weismann’s theory of hard inheritance and Alfred Kroeber’s cultural determinism, neo-Darwinism, unlike the reductionism of sociobiology, which starts from a strong conceptual separation of nature and culture in which nature and culture are two separate causal factors equally important for explaining human behaviour and human sociability. Finally, I deal with Tim Ingold’s critique of this sharp conceptual separation, which comes from the position of developmental systems theorists in evolutionary biology.

  • Issue Year: 23/2023
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 25-45
  • Page Count: 21
  • Language: Serbian