Thom Scott-Phillips explores cultural evolution in first ever Newcastle Darwin Day Lecture

11 February, 2016

Darwin Day Lecturer Thom Scott-Phillips, whose career in science began was inspired by a Darwin Day Lecture he attended more than 10 years beforehand
Darwin Day Lecturer Thom Scott-Phillips, whose career in science began was inspired by a Darwin Day Lecture he attended more than 10 years beforehand

More than 400 humanists gathered in Newcastle last night for the first of two Darwin Day Lectures organised by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The Newcastle Darwin Day Lecture was presented by evolutionary anthropologist Dr Thom Scott-Phillips, and was hosted in association with the North East Humanists.

Thom gave the first ever BHA Darwin Day Lecture hosted in the North East, and humanists from the area showed their enthusiasm by turning out in their hundreds for his talk on theme of ‘How Darwinian is cultural evolution?’ In his lecture, Thom challenged the audience to think about the means by which ideas, philosophies, and even institutions can change over time, and how well these changes change can be explained by analogy with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

Referring to the ‘meme’, the term coined by BHA Patron Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe a unit of cultural information, he explained that replication, as it occurs with genes, is never even attempted with memes. Whilst the ‘error rate’ in copying a genome might be in the region of one-in-a-million, the transmission of ideas comes nowhere close to this.

Thom explained that while genetic information is passed from genome to genome, and so stays within the same medium, cultural information will pass from an idea in a mind to a public representation of that idea (such as speaking or arguing) on the way to becoming an idea in another person’s mind. As a result of this, the replication is far from perfect: those two ideas will be very different, not least due to the lived experiences of the first and second minds and the pre-existing ideas they bring to bear on them.

Thom also reflected on his own personal connection to the BHA’s Darwin Day Lecture, saying that it was attending one such event more than a decade beforehand which first inspired him to become a scientist. Before giving way to a lively question and answer session, he concluded his talk by saying that attempting to closely identify cultural evolution as something which took place ‘through Darwinian means’ was often like ‘trying to nail a square peg into a round hole’.

Notes

The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity.

The Darwin Day Lecture, held each February as part of the British Humanist Association’s annual lecture series, explores Humanism and humanist thought, especially that related to science and evolution, Charles Darwin, and his works. It takes place every year on or around 12 February, coinciding with Darwin Day, the annual global celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin. 2016 is the first year in which the BHA has organised two Darwin Day Lectures, with talks in both London and Newcastle.

Dr Thom Scott-Phillips is a Senior Research Fellow in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Durham University, where he investigates evolutionary and cognitive approaches to the human mind and culture. His first book, Speaking our Minds, was published in November 2014. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the New Investigator Award from the European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, as well as the British Psychological Society’s prize for Outstanding Doctoral Research.