How a Generation Was Misled About Natural Selection

This article explains how natural selection works and how it has been inappropriately applied to the description of cultural change. It proposes an alternative evolutionary explanation for cultural evolution that describes it in terms of communal exchange. When science is explained to the general public it is necessary to simplify. Inevitably details get left out, details that some consider important, and the ‘sexy' parts of the story get played up. But so long as the overall picture is more or less right, scientists generally appreciate the efforts of popular science writers, the press, and in some cases their fellow colleagues, to make their work accessible to a wider audience. The public in turn benefits from the opportunity to see the world they live in from a new perspective, and consider questions they might not otherwise have considered. Sometimes, though, the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. The ‘babyless' version of a scientific story may be a hit nonetheless. Unless one has advanced training in a highly specialized area of a scientific discipline, it may appear to make sense. In most cases, the