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Jonnie Hughes

On the Origin of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves) Hardcover – August 9, 2011

by Jonnie Hughes (Author)

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Why do some ideas spread, while others die off? Does human culture have its very own survival of the fittest? And if so, does that explain why our species is so different from the rest of life on Earth?

Throughout history, we humans have prided ourselves on our capacity to have ideas, but perhaps this pride is misplaced. Perhaps ideas have us. After all, ideas do appear to have a life of their own. And it is they, not us, that benefit most when they are spread. Many biologists have already come to the opinion that our genes are selfish entities, tricking us into helping them to reproduce. Is it the same with our ideas?

Jonnie Hughes, a science writer and documentary filmmaker, investigates the evolution of ideas in order to find out. Adopting the role of a cultural Charles Darwin, Hughes heads off, with his brother in tow, across the Midwest to observe firsthand the natural history of ideasthe patterns of their variation, inheritance, and selection in the cultural landscape. In place of Darwins oceanic islands, Hughes visits the mind islands of Native American tribes. Instead of finches, Hughes searches for signs of natural selection among the tepees.

With a knack for finding the humor in the quirks of the American cultural landscape, Hughes takes us on a tour from the Mall of America in Minneapolis to what he calls the maul of AmericaCusters last standstopping at road-sides and discoursing on sandwiches, the shape of cowboy hats, the evolution of barn roofs, the wording of jokes, the wearing of moustaches, and, of course, the telling features from tepees of different tribes. Original, witty, and engaging, On the Origin of Tepees offers a fresh way of understanding both our ideas and ourselves.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Free Press
Publication date

August 9, 2011
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1439110239
ISBN-13

978-1439110232
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jonnie Hughes is a science writer and filmmaker with over twelve years experience in communicating science to a broader public on radio, television, in print, and face-to-face. He is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker and regular contributor to Geographical Magazine, BBC Wildlife Magazine, The Guardian, and The Times. His films have aired on National Geographic, Discovery, BBC One and Two, and Channel 5. He has won the Association of British Science Writers and the Wellcome Trust Awards for science writing and a BBC Radio One Award for factual radio and the American Genesis Award for Best Popular Television Documentary. He lives in London, England.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; 1st. edition (August 9, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1439110239
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1439110232
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,572,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,019 in Evolution (Books)
- #16,186 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #23,062 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

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17 ratings

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Jonnie Hughes

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Jonnie Hughes spent his childhood methodically scouring the rock pools of the Devon coast in South West England. Captivated by the miniature wildernesses he discovered, he studied ecology and evolution at the University of Leeds, then moved to London to build a career telling others all about Life, what it is and how it works. He taught about it in college, wrote about it in newspapers and magazines, and made films about it for the BBC, Discovery, and National Geographic Channel. His journalism, radio and television work have all won awards. On the Origin of Tepees is his first book.

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Tim Tyler

Memes with beauty and humor

Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2012

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This book has a title which is obviously based on Charles Darwin's 1859 book. It's about the author's discovery of cultural evolution and memetics. The author imitates Darwin's trip to the Galapagos by seeking out cultural islands within the American mainland - mainly looking at artefacts - hats, barns and tepees. It is an unusual mixture of popular science and road trip.

The author uses the metaphor of view-point-altering goggles to help describe his journey. When he puts the goggles on he looks at things through the eyes of a cultural evolutionist - and the world looks pretty different and unusual to him.

The memetics in this book is good. Jonnie Hughes has a pretty good understanding of the topic, in my opinion.

The author spends most of the book on cultural evolution, and then describes how the "gene" revolution - which transformed evolutionary biology in the 1950s and 1960s - has a direct parallel in cultural evolution - which has its own little bits of inherited cultural information: memes. This insight has led to the "meme's eye view" - and other important developments.

If I made scientific criticisms, I would first point to the author's endorsement of internalism, which I find to be an unhelpful perspective. The other thing that I thought was wrong was his explanation for why memes have not made much progress in academia. He says it is the difficulty in actually identifying them in the brain. That isn't really the right answer. Plenty of other things that can't be directly observed don't face the same problem. There are several other reasons why academia has had trouble digesting memetics.

Much of the serious science in the book is confined to a bibliography at the end. It is four pages long. I would have preferred the whole book to have been like that. Memetics needs the attention of scientists more than it needs conversion stories by science writers.

Lastly I'll tell you about my favourite bit of the book. It's a bit near the end - where the author likens pioneer species colonising a new environment to memes colonising an infant's mind. Hughes explains in some detail how the early species in an environment create the ecosystem for those that follow them - in the same way that early memes create a mental environment for the more complex ones that follow them. This is a beautiful analogy, and in the hands of an eloquent science writer like Hughes, it is a joy to read.

Let's hope Jonnie keeps those memes coming in the future.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Great Introduction to a Fascinating Topic

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2016

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If you are looking for an introduction to the subject of cultural evolution then this book is a great place to start. I recommend you start with this book rather than one of the other more academic books on the subject. If this book peaked your interest then I would continue with "Cultural Evolution" by Mesoudi.

What I really liked was the author's fearlessness in exploring how ideas evolve. He comes to the conclusion that we might not be as much in the driver's seat as we like to think. This is a fascinating hypothesis and one I found convincing. It has a Copernican feel to it, moving humankind away from the center of the cultural universe. Of course, it's more complicated than that but that is gist of his argument.

You will see in other reviews that the notion of memes is "discredited" or "a canard". This is simply not true. It is true, however, that memes remain a controversial topic and many cultural evolutionist have backed away from the idea, at least temporarily. Culture is very complex and it will take time for scientists to work out the best genotype vs phenotype model for it. For now scientists have chosen to focus on the phenotype, i.e. the stetson hat itself, rather than whatever genotype underlies it (meme or otherwise).

It also seems from some of the reviews that the entire notion of cultural evolution makes some people uncomfortable. You can tell when this is happening because they will use words like "determinism" or "reductionism". Sadly, science isn't there to make us feel comfortable or to confirm our political and emotional biases. It's goal is to accurately describe how the world is, not how we wish it were. If culture does evolve in a darwinian way, and if the empirical evidence supports it, then we must be brave enough to accept it.

2 people found this helpful

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Student of History

travelogue plus the history of human culture

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2012

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This book contains a light-hearted "modern Englishman travels in the New World" story, interspersed with a vivid summary of broad evolutionary reasons why people are the way they are, written by someone with a fine grasp of popular writing for thoughtful people. I bought several extra copies to give as college graduation presents to psychology and communications majors.

Based on my several years of research into macrohistory, I only found one or two minor points to quibble with; for instance, in discussing the spread of Old World humans to the New World, the author repeated the "inland valley route" theory without mentioning a competing theory of coastal migration. But this is trivial compared to the real accomplishment of presenting a readable, thorough theory to explain the uniqueness of human accomplishments, relative to other creatures on Earth.

Reviewed in the United States on February 15, 2012

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Jonnie Hughes as done an excellent job of introducing me to the subject of memes through the exploration of Indian life on the Great Plains and the evolution of tepees. I highly recommend this as a valuable addition to anyone interested in the evolution of ideas and culture and the subject of Epistemology.

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Ed

Evolution of Ideas.

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2014

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Quite interesting. A lot of food for thought. I will need to re-read & highlight an number of concepts.

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2017

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My chickens love them!

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Simon

An outstanding insight into our origins

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2011

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Hughes has a way with words which enables him to present ideas in a very readable way. The origins of human culture wrapped up in a road trip across the plains of North America with a good dose of Darwin along the way. I found this book pleasantly humorous and fascinating and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in why we are the way we are.

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On the Origin of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves) Hardcover – August 9, 2011

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