The ability of humans to create and disseminate culture is often credited as the single most
important factor of our success as a species. In this Perspective, we explore the notion of …

Cultural attraction theory (CAT) is a research agenda the purpose of which is to develop
causal explanations of cultural phenomena. CAT is also an evolutionary approach to culture …

Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and
complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating …

The zone of latent solutions (ZLS) hypothesis provides an alternative approach to explaining
cultural patterns in primates and many other animals. According to the ZLS hypothesis, non …

In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field.
To the traditional question that has dominated the debate—under what conditions does …

Imaginary worlds are extremely successful. The most popular fictions produced in the last
few decades contain such a fictional world. They can be found in all fictional media, from …

Is technological advancement constrained by biases in human cognition? People in all
societies build on discoveries inherited from previous generations, leading to cumulative …

Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as
“pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the …

Since the emergence of our species at least, natural selection based on genetic variation
has been replaced by culture as the major driving force in human evolution. It has made us …

This paper begins with an analysis of Tennie's account of hominin culture: the claims that
cumulative culture depends on a distinctive form of social learning; that that form of social …