Guest Editorial: Evolution, Cultural and Biological

Abstract

ion, others that it is the sum of human activities, or the patterns of human behavior within a given society, still others that it includes all "artifacts, socifacts and mentifacts," to use Bidney's convenient terms for the different types of products of a culture or human society.8 A further confusion arises owing to a radical difference between psycho-social and biological evolution?first, the lack of any sharp distinction in the psycho-social sector between soma and germ-plasm; secondly, the presence of an increasing trend toward convergence superimposed upon that to? ward divergence. Culture, in the objectively definable sense which seems natural to a biologist, is at one and the same time both soma and germ-plasm, both a mechanism of maintenance and a mechanism of reproduction or transmission. This statement needs some minor qualifications, for instance, the system of material produc? tion is more concerned with maintenance, the educational system more with transmis? sion. But the material objects produced and the skills that produce them also are di? rectly transmissible (unlike the metabolic products and activities of the animal soma); and the knowledge and attitudes trans? mitted by education are also directly con? cerned with the maintenance of culture and the body politic (unlike the germplasm tucked away within the body or-