Descriptions

Biology-culture relationships in the evolution of language and music

While early research on the evolution of language and music has mainly focused on the nature vs. nurture dichotomy, current approaches mostly agree on the importance of both biological and cultural processes. Especially, biology-culture coevolutionary theories (e.g., gene-culture coevolution theory and niche construction theory) have been repeatedly suggested to provide useful frameworks to study the evolution of complex cognitive phenomena such as language and music, which cannot be explained by pure biological, environmental, or cultural factors (Arbib & Iriki, 2013; Laland, 2017; Patel, 2018; Richerson & Boyd, 2010; Savage et al., 2021; Smith, 2020). At the center of those frameworks is the idea that culture provides an additional inheritance system, introduces new selection pressures, and influences biology over evolutionary timescales. However, there is still a need to clarify the precise mechanisms of how language and music evolution are shaped by biological, environmental, or cultural factors. Without such specificity, it is not clear how language and music evolution research can benefit from biology-culture coevolutionary perspectives.

The current workshop addresses this issue alongside the following research questions:

  1. There are different ways for culture to influence biology (Arbib & Iriki, 2013; Heyes, 2019; Whitehead, Laland, Rendell, Thorogood, & Whiten, 2019). What are the central concepts of biology-culture coevolutionary theories, and what are the different levels of the biology-culture relationship?

  2. The biology-culture coevolutionary theories are applicable only in cases where culture causes clear biological changes (Whitehead et al., 2019; Whiten, Ayala, Feldman, & Laland, 2017). What are the candidate components of language and music that meet this criterion and thus are the objects of study within those frameworks?

  3. The relationship between biology and culture may vary for different components of language (Smith, 2020) and music. Which components of language and music can be / should be explained on which levels of the biology-culture relationship?

  4. Without testable explanatory mechanisms and clear concepts, the biology-culture coevolutionary theories remain empty as implied by critical discussions of the niche construction theory (Scott-Phillips, Laland, Shuker, Dickins, & West, 2014; Spengler, 2021). What testable predictions for the evolution of language and music are generated by the biology-culture coevolutionary theories (but not by other evolutionary theories) and how do we test them?

This workshop will contribute to interdisciplinary discussions on the evolution of language and music by linking evolutionary biology, cognitive science, social sciences, and the humanities. Moreover, by discussing language and music evolution based on biology-culture frameworks, this workshop facilitates scientific communication between evolutionary linguistics and evolutionary musicology.

References


Arbib, M. A., & Iriki, A. (2013). Evolving the Language- and Music-Ready Brain. In M. A. Arbib (Ed.), Language, Music, and the Brain (pp. 481–497). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Heyes, C. (2019). Précis of Cognitive Gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, e169. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18002145

Laland, K. N. (2017). The origins of language in teaching. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 225–231. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1077-7

Patel, A. D. (2018). Music as a Transformative Technology of the Mind: An Update. In H. Honing (Ed.), The Origins of Musicality (pp. 113–126). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10636.003.0009

Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2010). Why possibly language evolved. Biolinguistics, 4(2–3), 289–306.

Savage, P. E., Loui, P., Tarr, B., Schachner, A., Glowacki, L., Mithen, S., & Fitch, W. T. (2021). Music as a coevolved system for social bonding. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44, e59. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20000333

Scott-Phillips, T. C., Laland, K. N., Shuker, D. M., Dickins, T. E., & West, S. A. (2014). The niche construction perspective: A critical appraisal. Evolution, 68(5), 1231–1243. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12332

Smith, K. (2020). How culture and biology interact to shape language and the language faculty. Topics in Cognitive Science, 12(2), 690–712. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12377

Spengler, R. N. (2021). Niche construction theory in archaeology: A critical review. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 28(3), 925–955. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-021-09528-4

Whitehead, H., Laland, K. N., Rendell, L., Thorogood, R., & Whiten, A. (2019). The reach of gene–culture coevolution in animals. Nature Communications, 10(1), 2405. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10293-y

Whiten, A., Ayala, F. J., Feldman, M. W., & Laland, K. N. (2017). The extension of biology through culture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7775–7781. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1707630114