Culture as a Biological Construct

Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science Scientists currently employ numerous approaches to examine culture and its origin. Specifically, studies in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and archeology focus on illuminating different aspects of the cultural phenomenon. Although these traditional approaches provide much knowledge of the elements that constitute culture (e.g. value definitions, patterns of behaviors, artifacts), they are limited in their ability to examine the human mechanisms that truly enable culture. In order to reveal the basic building blocks of cultural development in human society, a new perspective is needed. This perspective is found, at least in part, in the scientific realms of cognitive neuroscience, genetics, and molecular biology. By combining the principles being established in these dynamic fields, we find that the human psyche and the biological and genetic processes that shape cognition underlie culture and influence its differentiation. The definitions of culture extend in a great number of directions (Lumsden, 1989). These diverse reference points allow for a comparison among the various approaches into this subject. A sociologist and an anthropologist define culture in terms of patterns of behavior and the resulting interactions between an individual and society. An archaeologist defines culture by the artifacts that provide a window into the societies of the past. Lumsden notes that these definitions and treatments of culture are limited because they do not delve into the root of the concept: “Artifacts and behaviors are, after all, the products of mental activity, of people’s ability to make sense of and act within the world” (Lumsden, 1989). Moreover, although culture is usually viewed as the practices of a group of individuals, it is the individual’s actions and mental activity behind those actions that enable the group’s cultural expression. Therefore, the first step towards a greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying culture is to focus on the individual’s mental activity—his psyche. Tooby and Cosmides have developed the following definition: “Culture is the ongoing product of evolved psyches of individual humans living in groups” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1989). By using this definition, we focus on the elements of cultural development that are cognitively definable. Therefore, the goal is to be able to examine the “private culture” within the minds of individuals. In this framework, the emergent properties described by sociologists, anthropologists and archaeologists are regarded as the cultural products of the human psyche. However, what factors contribute to and shape the psyche? This question is the source of much debate and research in contemporary neuroscience. There are no clear-cut answers that emerge from any single investigation Culture as a Biological Construct