Page 505 - Cultures and Organizations

470 IMPLICATIONS

car bodies have resulted from recent pressure to lower air resistance so as

to enhance fuel efficiency at higher speeds.
Language
Evolution can also be purely symbolic, as in the case of language. Symbolic
language probably arose gradually out of song and simpler vocalizations
around one million to forty thousand years ago. It has enabled spectacular
changes and has itself recently been the object of ultrarapid symbolic evo-
lution. Storytelling is a central element of all human cultures that evolved
based on language, and it is one of the major inventions in our evolution. 45
Besides being born storytellers, we are uncannily good at creating new
languages. Since around 10,000 b.c., because of increases of scale and of
networking, the total number of polities and of peoplewide languages in
the world has decreased sharply. At the same time, though, neologisms
for new discoveries, cryptographic languages, computer languages, group-
based jargon, and poetry are being invented. Dictionaries notwithstanding,
language is now evolving at a time scale of months to decades. As a set of
replicators, language is complex: words, phrases, stories, idioms—all could
be meaningfully considered units of language evolution.
These were just a few examples. As social scientists, we authors would
also like to make a few remarks about our own profession in the light of
evolutionary thought. Although it is not always perceived as such, any study
of human behavior, any discipline of the social sciences and humanities, is
involved in looking at an aspect of behavioral or symbolic evolution. The
scope of these disciplines varies from the individual to the small group to the
society to international affairs. To further complicate matters, time scales of
most of these disciplines are in the order of years at most, or they might even
be ahistorical. As a result, they do not usually link to human evolutionary

history. This specialization has created a scattered landscape of disciplines
that misunderstand or neglect one another and that have limited predictive
value in real social life. This situation itself is understandable given that the
object of study is so complex and is so much a moving target. As an upshot,
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it has created the “ivory archipelago,” divorced from society, leaving a void

to be filled by ill-informed ideologies that tend to self-serve the groups that
adopt them. Such systems of thought become popular because they afford the
holistic view that is not being covered by the sciences. A more historic and
integrated approach that acknowledges human nature to the full will do the
social sciences and humanities a lot of good.