Some Psychological Mechanisms of Culture.

Abstract

There is a consensus amongst biologists interested in culture that one possible point of conceptual entry into this enormous and complex phenomenon is to consider cultural change as analogous to biological evolution .. In this paper this analogy is examined in the light of possible psychological mechanisms that allow humans to participate in culture.First, . .attention is payed to the general psychological mechanisms that make culture possible at all.The general stance that is adopted is that a viable theory of culture, including cultural change, can only be based upon adequate psychological theory; and that, at least until the advent of extrasomatic storage, human culture was strictly constrained by its psychological mechanisms.Knowing what these mechanisms are will help in reconstructing human history.

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