ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the prospects for adapting Darwinian theory to solve the problems without committing the sciences that employ the theory to any very strong genetic determinism. It discusses that wherever biological traits, processes, and behaviors show adaptation to their environment the causal mechanism producing them can be only some version of natural selection. Nonnativist Darwinian theory of cultural evolution requires of the human mind/brain is that it be especially good at learning by imitation. One of the strongest arguments against genetic determinism challenges the nativists' notion that it even makes sense to talk of a "gene for X", where X is a trait of interest to the social scientist. The debate about genetic determinism is of course just a modern-dress version of a much older one, which has traditionally been styled as the debate about nature versus nurture. Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection provides what is perhaps the only theoretical underpinning available for functions in the social sciences.
