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by shermantanktop 655 days ago
1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism

2) Evolution is a biological process term, and an overloaded and ambiguous one at that. Culture is accretive and driven by social dynamics. “Cultural evolution” is literally nonsensical. This was, however, a popular way of thinking in the nineteenth century; make of that what you will.

3) kids these days amirite?
2 comments
codeflo 655 days ago
> Evolution is a biological process term, and an overloaded and ambiguous one at that. Culture is accretive and driven by social dynamics. “Cultural evolution” is literally nonsensical. This was, however, a popular way of thinking in the nineteenth century; make of that what you will.

I think you might be confusing the modern understanding of cultural evolution with the 19th century (to put it plainly: racist) idea of social Darwinism. Cultural evolution is a much more recent concept that makes an analogy between the modern understanding of the transmission of genes and the transmission of ideas. The analogy is of course imperfect, but by no means "literally nonsensical". See here for a very comprehensive discussion: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution-cultural/

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shermantanktop 655 days ago
OP made a specific claim - words represent an evolutionary progression from hieroglyphs, are therefore better, and we should go forward and not back.

I see nothing in cultural memetic theorizing (which I summarized as “culture is accretive and driven by social dynamics”) that supports that.

The term “cultural evolution” is highly unfortunate as it is one more example of humanities folk borrowing science terminology in a bid to coin some evocative word salad that will sound relevant and scientific.

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Vecr 655 days ago
> 2) Evolution is a biological process term, and an overloaded and ambiguous one at that. Culture is accretive and driven by social dynamics. “Cultural evolution” is literally nonsensical. This was, however, a popular way of thinking in the nineteenth century; make of that what you will.

Calling things racist isn't a valid argument. Meme theory is from the 20th century, not the 19th.

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