Event Categories: BSPS Choice Group Conjectures and Refutations Popper Seminar Sigma Club
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Daniel Dennett (Tufts University): “Cultural Evolution: from memetic evolution to intelligent design”
20 March 2013, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Cultural Evolution: from memetic evolution to intelligent design
Speaker: Daniel Dennett (Tufts University)
Chair: Kristina Musholt (LSE)
Wednesday 20 March; 12.30-2.00 pm
Old Theatre; Old Building; LSE
Homo sapiens is the first species of intelligent designers to evolve by natural selection; a cascade of processes that works without any help from an intelligent designer. How was this possible? Cultural evolution is the key innovation; it began as a purely Darwinian process of natural selection of memes; but has spawned successor processes of invention that are ever less Darwinian; ever more foresighted and purposeful.