Cercia welcomes Monica Tamariz in giving a seminar on the evolution of language. A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, Monica will be visiting Cercia on Monday 30th January and is giving a talk entitled; Evolutionary Symbiosis in Cultural Transmission.

Models of cultural transmission have focussed on either the evolution of cultural forms or of ideas. I propose a framework to study cultural phenomena based on two selection systems for forms (such as art objects, the structure of languages or social behaviours) and meanings (such as concepts that can be transmitted through art, language or social interaction). The novelty of this approach is that the two selection systems are symbiotic, and they constraint and provide elements and mechanisms necessary for one another. Additionally, the resulting symbiotic combination must increase human fitness, since natural selection has favoured genes that provide culture with the neural substrate it needs. In this talk I will examine the general structure of the proposed framework, and explore its implementation for art, language and social interaction, focusing on parameters that might inform a computer modelling approach.