Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach - Tapa dura

This work provides new ways of bridging the social and cognitive sciences. Suppose, it suggests, a net is cast that lets through anything but mental things, and environmental things that have mental things, both among their causes and their effects. Will peole still catch all the subject matter of the social sciences? Sperber argues that people will, and that explanations of social-cultural phenomena in this reconceptualized domain will take the form of an epidemiology of representations, grounded in evolutionary thinking and in psychology. This volume should be of interest to cognitive scientists, social scientists and philosophers, but does not require specialized competence in any of these fields. This work provides new ways of bridging the social and cognitive sciences. It argues for an epidemiology of representations, grounded in evolutionary thinking and in psychology. The book should be of interest to cognitive scientists, social scientists and philosophers, but does not require specialized competence in any of these fields.

Dan Sperber is Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.