Contents

Introduction. Explaining Cultural Evolution: An Interdisciplinary Endeavor

Alan C. Love and William C. Wimsatt

1. Articulating Babel: A Conceptual Geography for Cultural Evolution

William C. Wimsatt

2. Scientific Agency and Social Scaffolding in Contemporary Data-Intensive Biology

Sabina Leonelli

3. Creating Cognitive-Cultural Scaffolding in Interdisciplinary Research Laboratories

Nancy J. Nersessian

4. Arches and Scaffolds: Bridging Continuity and Discontinuity in Theory Change

Michel Janssen

5. Promiscuous Inventions: Modeling Cultural Evolution with Multiple Inheritance

Jacob G. Foster and James A. Evans

6. Patented Technology as a Model System for Cultural Evolution

Mark A. Bedau

7. Modeling the Coevolution of Religion and Coordination in Balinese Rice Farming

Marshall Abrams

8. Content Matters: The Materiality of Cultural Transmission and the Intersection of Paleolithic Archaeology with Cultural Evolutionary Theory

Gilbert B. Tostevin

9. The Evolution of Language as Technology: The Cultural Dimension

Salikoko S. Mufwene

10. Writing in Early Mesopotamia: The Historical Interplay of Technology, Cognition, and Environment

Massimo Maiocchi

11. Cultural Scaffolding and Technological Change: A Preliminary Framework

Joseph D. Martin

12. The Evolution of the Social Self: Multidimensionality of Social Identity Solves the Coordination Problems of a Society

Paul E. Smaldino

13. Wicked Systems and the Friction between “Old Theory and New Data” in Biology, Social Science, and Archaeology

Claes Andersson, Anton Törnberg, and Petter Törnberg

Contributors

Index