ABSTRACT
To all we know, today’s members of the species homo sapiens are genetically not very different from their ancestors ten or twenty thousand years ago.2 By contrast, modern human life in advanced societies differs dramatically from the living conditions of our early human ancestors. This reflects, of course, the role that cultural evolution plays within the human species and the much higher speed at which cultural evolution proceeds compared to genetic or natural evolution. That the two kinds of evolutionary processes, natural evolution and cultural evolution, are different from each other in important respects is beyond dispute. Controversy exists, however, about what exactly their essential commonalities and their specific differences are. In dispute is, in particular, the question of what, in this regard, the relevant implications of the fact are that intentional human action and human deliberate design are the essential ingredients of cultural evolution.
