We know that there are two aspects, or two parts of human evolution, biological evolution and cultural evolution. You and Boyd have done significant work on articulate this and on developing the models for the study of the interaction between the two kinds of evolution.
What is most interested to me is the relative significance between biological and cultural evolution. That is, if cultural evolution is fast enough, is it going to overwhelm biological evolution? We can run computer simulation to answer this question.
The mathematical model and simulation of cultural evolution won’t be too hard if we correctly understand the psychological basis of cultural evolution. With this in mind, my section concern is how to use psychological knowledge to explain or analyze human behavior or choices as the individual player in the process of cultural evolution.
Some human psychological characters are environmental determined. Today’s psychology should have a whole bunch of theories for us to employ. I have audited some introductory psychology, social psychology and evolutionary psychology classes. Right now, I an taking a online course of cognitive psychology. In the future, I plan to take more psychology courses.
Many psychological charters could also be genetically determined, or at least partially so. Here is one place where biological evolution is involved. The simulation of biological evolution is not new. The difficult part will be the genetics of human psychology. I know that evolutionary psychologist have some very general theories about this, but I am not sure if there are well developed theories on the genetics of specific psychological tendencies.
So far, I have been talking about explaining cultural evolution with psychology in which biological evolution could play an important role. On the other hand, the influence of cultural evolution on biological evolution is strait-forward and should be easier to model.
