The Neverending Story: Cultural Evolution and Narratives
Lecture 1: Introduction I
This lecture sets the scene for the course. It explores the important role of narratives in human culture and the psychology of ‘narrativity’. It provides a brief introduction to how cultural evolution can approach these stories. The exercise involves reading a paper a crucial paper for understanding the cultural evolution approach.
Resources
Slides: (pdf)
Readings: Mesoudi et al. 2004. Perspective: Is human cultural evolution Darwinian? Evidence reviewed from the perspective of The Origin of Species (pdf)
Exercises: (pdf)
This project was supported by Grant #61105 from the John Templeton Foundation to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (PIs: S. Gavrilets and P. J. Richerson) with assistance from the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity and the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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