THE ORIGIN OF CULTURES: WHY, WHEN, & HOW CULTURE WORKS

c. 40-50,000 words, 6 chapters

1. The Puzzle (8,800)

What’s This Thing Culture?

Directional Change in Productivity

Revolutions Produce Qualitative Change

Names Aren’t Cultures

Many Cultures Intersect to Make a Person

A Thing, Sui Generis

Galton’s Problem

The Argument in This Book

2. What Makes a Door? (6,300)

What Exists Now Shapes What Comes Next

New Things Come From Old Things

What Exists Now Could Not Exist Without What Went Before

Why Cultures Must Evolve, Unexpectedly

What Sets Us Apart?

3. Sensory Fields and Cultural Outputs (7,000)

Different Experiences Produce Different Cultures

Sensory Isolation and Information Flow

We Take Our Cultures with Us

We Learn From Our Neighbors

Information Volume Regulates How Much We Learn

Rules for Cultural Design

Cultural Dynamics

4. Why We Don't Learn What We Could (9,000)

Why We Tell Good from Bad

Winnowing the Good from the Bad

Winnowing Makes for Incremental Change

How We Tell Good from Bad

What This Means

What Makes Consequences Change?

Cultural Evolution Shifts Course When Consequences Change

5. Consequences and Cultural Evolution (10,000?)

A Thought Experiment

Free Will, or Not, As the Case May Be

The Parable of the Good Son

Two Real Experiments

A Series of Natural Experiments

6. Lessons Learned (9,000?)

How Little Things Become Big Things

Errors Let You See What You Can’t

A Religion Is Like a Gun