ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses a paradigmatic example of evolutionary processes active in human history and in the development of past minds. In this case culture is not simply the explanandum to explained, but must be understood as part of evolution itself. The fact that so much of modern post-industrial life revolves around these forms of technology should give us pause, and working hard to think of ways to understand post-industrial brains with the new tools of cognitive science. In this sense, Judaism throughout history was probably the first highly distributed net work of people bonded in core beliefs of biological descent and common language. Thus, the main purpose of this essay has been to give the rudiments of a plausible account of downward forms of causation that also does justice to biology and cognition. It is for this reason that I have focused on mechanisms of niche construction and gene-culture co-evolution.