The Significance of Crossing Various Fields (4) - Thinking about the Evolution of Spoken Language, Written Language, and Stories Passed Down from Generation to Generation (Part 1) - Comprehensive Cultural Evolutionary Science

Given that both biological evolution and cultural evolution are Darwinian, it can be hypothesized that the science of cultural evolution resembles the structure of the science of biological evolution, namely evolutionary biology.

By the way, the foundation of Darwin's theory of evolution remains robust, and it seems to me that by returning to 'On the Origin of Species,' we can clarify things about the theory of cultural evolution.

'On the Origin of Species' can be called one long, long argument, and that argument consists of variation, the struggle for existence, and inheritance (heredity); this is the fundamental idea of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and all biological changes can be explained from the perspectives of variation, the struggle for existence, and inheritance, and evolution cannot occur if any of these are missing.

This theory, which can be said to be self-evident to biologists, is predicted to be applicable to culture as well, and if that prediction is correct, cultural change can be explained as the process of evolution that Darwin depicted.

First, regarding variation, following Darwin's example, it is thought that we can provide robust evidence beyond personal observation regarding cultural diversity (religion, political views, scientific knowledge, technology, etc.) and quantify that diversity.

For example, there are studies that look at variation in patents, religion, and language, and although the methods are currently open to improvement, millions and billions of cultural variants and diversity can be recorded and quantified, so it can be said that variation exists in culture.

Next, regarding competition, Darwin, inspired by the ideas of economist and demographer Thomas Malthus, stated that its cause arises from the dramatic increase in population and the resulting shortage of resources.

Some form of struggle for existence also exists in culture.

This is because human memory capacity and time for acquiring and expressing knowledge are limited.

The fact that a struggle for existence occurs in technology and language over limited resources will manifest in the phenomenon of extinction, just as biological species go extinct due to the struggle for existence.

Cultural competition occurs in the form of competition over brain memory capacity, and as a result, various cultural habits and forms disappear.

Yes, cultural traits, like biological ones, are always competing for survival.

Now, before moving on to inheritance, as a digression, analyses of the causes of recent wars, refugee crises, famine, and pandemics almost always focus only on political, economic, and personal causes, and the urgent root cause of population explosion is almost never touched upon.

However, two centuries ago, the aforementioned Malthus had deep insights regarding demography, and
he argued that 'the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,' meaning that while population tends to increase rapidly in a geometric progression, food increases only slowly in an arithmetic progression.

Even though resources are limited, the problem of population explosion is almost absolutely taboo to discuss or bring up in media, political debates, or scholarly presentations, even if it is currently the direct cause of virtually every catastrophic problem in the world.

This is because when discussing population explosion, one must touch upon population control, and because of the terrifying implications and associations that population control implies, everyone avoids the topic of population explosion.

The implications of population control include various things that people do not want to discuss and have kept under wraps, such as Hitler, eugenics, contradictions with deeply rooted religious beliefs, the destruction of family life, and ethnocentrism.

However, for example, Syria is currently experiencing a typical population explosion as advocated by Malthus, with its population increasing from 3 million in 1950 to 22 million in 2012, and from 2006 to 2009, it experienced a long-term drought that climate scientists attributed to global warming.

This drought caused large-scale crop failure, and 1.5 million residents living in rural areas migrated to urban areas.

Such stress soon led to a horrific civil war and anarchy, which is currently bringing about what Malthus called 'cruel population checks'.

Between 250,000 and 500,000 people have been killed, and more than half of the pre-civil war population has been forced to move within the country or emigrate abroad.

And this problem has only just begun, and no solution is in sight.

When viewing the daily top news from the perspective that we are merely putting a lid on the problem, do you realize that new catastrophes are not something to be shocked by, but rather the result of what we humans have been turning a blind eye to?

What is reflected in these catastrophes is simply a scene of far too many people chasing far too few resources.

Revolutions, civil wars, mass migration, famines, droughts, and floods that destroy regions with population explosions are occurring almost inevitably.

And bacteria and viruses are not targeting other species with smaller populations, but are proliferating on the newly emerged, massive supply of human prey, causing large-scale infections.

It seems to me that continuing to avoid the problem of population explosion is a threat that increases the risk of even more fatal wars, and that we are remaining blind to the future.

Now, Darwin even stated that "variations that are not inherited are unimportant," emphasizing the importance of inheritance.

Darwin must have thought that if inheritance did not occur, beneficial traits would not be preserved, and evolution could not take place.

However, time passed since Darwin's logic, in which inheritance and genetics were essential, and it was only after Mendel's pea experiments were re-evaluated and further experiments were conducted in the early 20th century that the mechanism of genes was finally elucidated.

By the way, when cultural information is inherited, it cannot be said that culture is undergoing Darwinian evolution just by being transmitted from person to person.

We know that Darwin called biological evolution "descent with modification," and believed that for evolution to occur, small changes must not only be passed from parent to offspring, but must be inherited over many generations and combined with other beneficial traits.

In culture, too, we know that excellent inventions are things that have been modified from existing ones or are combinations of separate inventions that have already been made.

For example, mathematics has reached its current state through innovations by different people in different societies accumulating over a very long time, and then further inventions such as Greek geometry, Arabic algebra, and European calculus being continuously added.

We can see what Darwin called "inheritance" in human culture as well.

Just as genes are passed from parent to offspring in biological evolution, cultural variants are faithfully passed from person to person, and furthermore, cultural inheritance is done quite faithfully, which allows for the accumulation of variations such as those Darwin observed in biological lineages.

Thank you for reading this far.

Let's try not to overdo it today, but still do our best. Well then, until next time. *The header image is once again from BCL's "Ghost in the Cell" 😌 Hatsune Miku's DNA sequence seems to have been further created as derivative works by an unspecified number of people participating in the online project "hmDNA," not only adding information about Miku's appearance to DNA based on Japanese genetic information, but also writing in each person's own image of Miku 😌