The Evolution of Theories of Human Evolution: The Pluralistic Integrative Structure of Positive Feedback Theory

Abstract

Sterelny argues that the driving force of human evolution lies in positive feedback generated by interactions among ecological, informational, and reproductive cooperation. Humans shared information necessary for survival and reproduction and constructed cooperative niches; dual inheritance, niche construction, phenotypic and developmental plasticity, and apprentice learning thereby reinforced one another and drove the evolution of cognition, communication, culture, and morality. This paper analyzes the structure and progressiveness of Sterelny’s Positive Feedback Theory through Lakatos’ methodology of scientific research programmes. Dual inheritance, niche construction, and positive feedback constitute the hard core, while variable environments, phenotypic plasticity, and the apprentice learning model form a protective belt connecting the core to empirical phenomena. The hard core is preserved by negative heuristics, whereas positive heuristics transform and reconstruct the protective belt to resolve anomalies and generate novel predictions. Through this reconstruction, Sterelny’s theory seeks to overcome the fixed environment of evolutionary adaptedness and innate modularity of Evolutionary Psychology, the replicator reductionism of Memetics, the single-adaptation or key-innovation explanations of rival accounts including Human Behavioral Ecology, and the lack of proximate micro-causal mechanisms in traditional Gene–Culture Coevolution Theory. The renewed hunting hypothesis and the modest grandmother hypothesis, which are grounded by pattern-recognition-based social learning, apprentice transmission of public artifacts and practical skills, life-history feedback, provide theoretically and empirically novel predictions.