Thursday, 5 January 2012  Tim Tyler: Mesoudi, Cultural evolution
(review)   Hi, I'm Tim Tyler, and this is a review of this book:
Cultural evolution by Alex Mesoudi.  This is a great book about
the important topic of cultural evolution.  Alex Mesoudi is an
experimental psychologist working in the field, and has
previously published numerous papers and a PhD thesis on the
topic.  His book lays out the case for a Darwinian theory of
cultural evolution in plain language, in a manner which should
be comprehensible to a wide audience.  The preface states his
aim with the book - which he says "is to nudge the social
sciences along a little". He does this by illustrating the
progress that has been made in explaining culture scientifically
using Darwinian evolutionary theory.  The book is divided up
into introductory material, microevolution, macroevolution,
experimental work, field work, evolutionary economics, culture
in non-human animals and a chapter about the coming evolutionary
synthesis for the social sciences