Towards a Biological Re-Interpretation of Culture

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to probe the conception, widespread in the humanities and the social sciences, that human behaviour is controlled in part by culture. Approaching the issue from a humanistic point of view, the possibility of an alternative account of the relationship between culture and behaviour will be explored. Following the lead of converging insights in the life and cognitive sciences, it will be argued that the totality of human activities, and of their accumulated products subsumed under the title of ‘culture’, has a genetic basis. Physical artefacts, intangibles such as language, norms and values, rituals, literature, music, science, as well as social and political institutions, may profitably be analysed as projections and extensions of the human body and its underlying mechanisms. The idea of culture as an independent entity that draws on non–bodily sources to shape human behaviour may be a red herring. Cultural patterns emerge from pre-programmed genetic information stored in the brain and activated by external stimuli.