Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach [Paperback]

Dan Sperber (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0631200452 | ISBN-13: 978-0631200451 | Publication Date: November 14, 1996 | Edition: 1

Ideas, Dan Sperber argues, may be contagious. They may invade whole populations. In the process, the people, their environment, and the ideas themselves are being transformed. To explain culture is to describe the causes and the effects of this contagion of ideas. This book will be read by all those with an interest in the impact of the cognitive revolution on our understanding of culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dan Sperber is to be thanked for continuing to contribute to dialogue between the cognitive and social branches of the human sciences." Daniel Nettle, Merton College Oxford

"Apart from its wealth of insight, cogent arguments, apposite illustrations, and lucid and entertaining prose, Explaining Culture also offers a glimpse of what cultural study might be: rather than foreclosing possibilities on the strength of received wisdom or a selective interdisciplinary which rules out so much interesting thinking, it makes its own start on the formulation of fresh, apparently basic but at the same time far-reaching research questions. Alan Durant

"Sperber emphasizes macro-and micro-processes of distribution that make cultural transformation and individual development possible and most simply processes of replication. Sperber offers the beginnings of a naturalistic theory of both culture and religion that will interest students and scholars alike." Susan Henking, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Geneva

"Explaining Culture is a good read. It is full of interesting suggestions on a wide range of anthropological and psychological issues." Kim Sterelny, Music and Letters, Vol 110, July 2001.

From the Back Cover

Ideas, Dan Sperber argues, may be contagious. They may invade whole populations. In the process, the people, their environment, and the ideas themselves are being transformed. To explain culture is to describe the causes and the effects of this contagion of ideas. This book will be read by all those with an interest in the impact of the cognitive revolution on our understanding of culture.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Blackwell Publishers; 1 edition (November 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0631200452
• ISBN-13: 978-0631200451
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #750,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Yet another science of culture, February 9, 2006

By 

Hiram Caton (Brisbane Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Paperback)

Sperber wants to make anthropology and psychology partners in the construction of a theory of culture centered on `the epidemiology of beliefs'. Epidemiology examines the factors determining the frequency and distribution of diseases in a population. Similarly, the aspiring culturology will map the frequency and distribution of beliefs in a population.

The choice of epidemiology as the model science seems to be based on nothing more than the insinuations of English idiom. Idiom likens the spread of ideas to contagion. We say that ideas, moods, personalities, and fads are infectious. Rumor and disaffection spread like fevers through the body politic. Cheerfulness is contagious-smile and the world smiles with you. But usage provides no clue to causality. It is equally content with mechanical metaphors, such as the `band wagon effect' and the `climate of opinion', while outbreaks of frenzy, mania or hysteria are likened to floods, cyclones and wild fire. Idioms are heedless of the difference between plague and weather as transmission mechanisms. Oddly for an anthropologist, Sperber takes no notice of these clues to how the natives perceive thought transmission. An assessment must be made if we are to avoid confounding `good enough' idiomatic analogies with causal mechanisms.

My suspicion that epidemiology is a red herring deepened on reading Sperber's account of the new culturology. On pages 109 and 112 he introduces graphs representing the spread and transformation of beliefs under the influence of `attractors'. Attractors are characterized in two ways. In one statement, an attractor is `an abstract, statistical concept, like a mutation rate or a transformation probability' (p. 111). Not much is said about it. A cultural attractor, however, is a specific practice or model. Manners, rituals, architectural styles, and resource-rich environments illustrate. Sperber has more to say about cultural attractors. A piece of culture is likely to become an attractor to the extent that it is the shortest distance between an initial condition and a beneficial outcome. This concept is usually called `optimality', but the author calls it the `effect-effort balance', where the `processing of any given piece of information determines its degree of relevance' because behavior tends toward actions in which `the intended effect can be achieved at minimal cost' (p. 114). Many attractors are unique to individuals; others, as gene-linked algorithms, cut deep channels through all populations, e.g., critical learning times and courtship strategies. The stability of cultural practices, he advises, is due to the fact that they are `attracted' to these natural psychological channels and their presumed neural or genetic substrates.

Sperber provides a three page exposition meant to illustrate the difference between replication and transformation, and the stable combination of replication and transformation processes in a population. The combinatorial space is represented by a cellular matrix. He assigns cell types in some arbitrary quantity, and combinatorial possibilities to each type. The matrix now describes a combinatorial state space. An engine is needed to activate cell `growth'. Sperber doesn't say what the engine is, but once it starts, the initial random distribution of cells in the matrix begins to alter. With each generation (or turn of the engine's wheel), the distribution of cell types changes. Patterns emerge as iterations continue; eventually we see patterns aggregating around two attractors. What is happening here? Sperber's matrix reminded me of cellular automata, the discovery by John Conway that led to nonlinear interpretations of game theory. Cellular automata with simple combinatorial instructions programmed into computer graphics are capable of remarkable behavior. Some instructions yield homogeneity, some express fractal self-similarity, and still others cross the boundary between stability and chaos to bifurcate into ramified local structures in the basins of chaotic attractors. The engines of these transformations are recursive nonlinear equations. Could this be the inspiration of attraction theory? In footnote 34, p. 158 he writes: `Sophisticated notions of attractors . . . have been developed in complex systems dynamics [aka nonlinear theory, chaos theory, self-organization theory, fractals theory], and may well turn out to be of future use in modelling cultural evolution, but a very elementary notion of an attractor will do for the present purpose'. Oh dear! So much for `science'!

If Sperber's effort to raise a new science doesn't come off, does he present some concrete insights on the transmission of thought? I'm afraid the answer is No, at least for me. I found no discussion of recognized types of transmission-panics, crazes, cults, sports mania, medical scares, propaganda, advertising, mobbing, and the like. As for identifying the transmission microprocesses, his message is confused. Cultural germ theorists like Richard Dawkins don't identify the somatic process corresponding to infectious disease. Sperber has an alternative cognitivist position: he proposes that inferences mediate cognitive processing. But what do inferences operate on? On sensorimotor information. Many inferences are already `in' the senses. Here is the clue to the fugitive microprocesses obscured by epidemiology. The nonmetaphorical term is `communication'. Communication isn't pathogenic and medical models aren't relevant.

It seems to me that Sperber's culturology doesn't really get off the ground.

7 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars superb sperber, August 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Paperback)

Simply brilliant; Dan Sperber brings his realist view to an area which has previously been explained away with mystic, relativistic stances. Recommended reading for all cultural studies students

27 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Yet another science of culture, February 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Paperback)

Sperber wants to make anthropology and psychology partners in the construction of a theory of culture centered on 'the epidemiology of beliefs'. Epidemiology examines the factors determining the frequency and distribution of diseases in a population. Similarly, the aspiring culturology will map the frequency and distribution of beliefs in a population.

The choice of epidemiology as the model science seems to be based on nothing more than the insinuations of English idiom. Idiom likens the spread of ideas to contagion. We say that ideas, moods, personalities, and fads are infectious. Rumor and disaffection spread like fevers through the body politic. Cheerfulness is contagious-smile and the world smiles with you. But usage provides no clue to causality. It is equally content with mechanical metaphors, such as the 'band wagon effect' and the 'climate of opinion', while outbreaks of frenzy, mania or hysteria are likened to floods, cyclones and wild fire. Idioms are heedless of the difference between plague and weather as transmission mechanisms. Oddly for an anthropologist, Sperber takes no notice of these clues to how the natives perceive thought transmission. An assessment must be made if we are to avoid confounding 'good enough' idiomatic analogies with causal mechanisms.

My suspicion that epidemiology is a red herring deepened on reading Sperber's account of the new culturology. On pages 109 and 112 he introduces graphs representing the spread and transformation of beliefs under the influence of 'attractors'. Attractors are characterized in two ways. In one statement, an attractor is 'an abstract, statistical concept, like a mutation rate or a transformation probability' (p. 111). Not much is said about it. A cultural attractor, however, is a specific practice or model. Manners, rituals, architectural styles, and resource-rich environments illustrate. Sperber has more to say about cultural attractors. A piece of culture is likely to become an attractor to the extent that it is the shortest distance between an initial condition and a beneficial outcome. This concept is usually called 'optimality', but the author calls it the 'effect-effort balance', where the 'processing of any given piece of information determines its degree of relevance' because behavior tends toward actions in which 'the intended effect can be achieved at minimal cost' (p. 114). Many attractors are unique to individuals; others, as gene-linked algorithms, cut deep channels through all populations, e.g., critical learning times and courtship strategies. The stability of cultural practices, he advises, is due to the fact that they are 'attracted' to these natural psychological channels and their presumed neural or genetic substrates.

Sperber provides a three page exposition meant to illustrate the difference between replication and transformation, and the stable combination of replication and transformation processes in a population. The combinatorial space is represented by a cellular matrix. He assigns cell types in some arbitrary quantity, and combinatorial possibilities to each type. The matrix now describes a combinatorial state space. An engine is needed to activate cell 'growth'. Sperber doesn't say what the engine is, but once it starts, the initial random distribution of cells in the matrix begins to alter. With each generation (or turn of the engine's wheel), the distribution of cell types changes. Patterns emerge as iterations continue; eventually we see patterns aggregating around two attractors. What is happening here? Sperber's matrix reminded me of cellular automata, the discovery by John Conway that led to nonlinear interpretations of game theory. Cellular automata with simple combinatorial instructions programmed into computer graphics are capable of remarkable behavior. Some instructions yield homogeneity, some express fractal self-similarity, and still others cross the boundary between stability and chaos to bifurcate into ramified local structures in the basins of chaotic attractors. The engines of these transformations are recursive nonlinear equations. Could this be the inspiration of attraction theory? In footnote 34, p. 158 he writes: 'Sophisticated notions of attractors . . . have been developed in complex systems dynamics [aka nonlinear theory, chaos theory, self-organization theory, fractals theory], and may well turn out to be of future use in modelling cultural evolution, but a very elementary notion of an attractor will do for the present purpose'. Oh dear! So much for 'science'!

If Sperber's effort to raise a new science doesn't come off, does he present some concrete insights on the transmission of thought? I'm afraid the answer is No, at least for me. I found no discussion of recognized types of transmission-panics, crazes, cults, sports mania, medical scares, propaganda, advertising, mobbing, and the like. As for identifying the transmission microprocesses, his message is confused. Cultural germ theorists like Richard Dawkins don't identify the somatic process corresponding to infectious disease. Sperber has an alternative cognitivist position: he proposes that inferences mediate cognitive processing. But what do inferences operate on? On sensorimotor information. Many inferences are already 'in' the senses. Here is the clue to the fugitive microprocesses obscured by epidemiology. The nonmetaphorical term is 'communication'. Communication isn't pathogenic and medical models aren't relevant.

It seems to me that Sperber's culturology doesn't really get off the ground.

Hiram Caton Griffith University