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Ever since Darwin, scholars in different disciplines have noted that very diverse cultural entities, such as languages, laws, firms, theories, etc. seem to ‘evolve’ through sequences of variation, selection, and replication, in many ways just like living organisms. This analogy between cultural and biological change has frequently been remarked, but seldom explored and analysed in detail. Is it ‘just a metaphor’, or can modern evolutionary theory help us to understand the dynamics of a variety of different cultural domains—linguistic, legal, economic, and so on?
Most of the papers published here are revised versions of talks given at a discussion meeting on this specific theme, held on 14-15 April 1999 at the British Academy, in London. This meeting was organised by Margaret Boden and John Ziman, and was sponsored jointly by the British Academy and the Epistemology Group. This volume also contains contributions invited from other scholars interested in the same subject. These somewhat varied texts were collected, collated, and edited for publication by Michael Wheeler. We are grateful to the British Academy and to Oxford University Press for their ready assistance in getting this material into print.
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