Talk:Sociocultural evolution

message: I recently noted a note at the early paragraphs of the article, reproduced here:
"(Note, this article focusses on that use of the term 'socio-cultural evolution' to refer to work that is not in line with contemporary understandings of the word 'evolution'. There is a separate body of academic work which uses the term 'cultural evolution' using a more consensus Darwinian understanding of the term 'evolution'. For a description of this work, based in the foundational work of DT Campbell in the 1960s and followed up by Boyd, Richerson, Cvalli-Sforza, and Feldman in the 1980s, go to Cultural evolution or Dual inheritance theory.)"
Sentences such as "Is not in line with contemporary understandings of the word evolution" or "using a more consensus Darwinian understanding of the term evolution" are a matter of opinion, and not a criteria about which topic deserves the title (besides, the usage represented in the article is even older than Darwin's work).
I am for removing this note. I added a Broaden template, as I think these fields and others (such as HBE, and perhaps clyodinamics) should be added or discussed. Alternatives could be 1) Add a disambiguation page, or 2) Add those topics as contents of this article (perhaps correcting and expanding the section "sociobiology"). The latter would be my preferred option, yet, this "separate body of academic work" has historically ignored (or dismissed) the previous existence of a body of knowledge using that name for a long time, which was very influential in the work of Darwin himself (and yet, they are supposed to be the "consensus Darwinian" body of knowledge). As far as I know, Stephen K. Sanderson is the only person who has attempted some discussion between both fields. The encyclopaedic article should not address this lack of discussion, but describe them as separated bodies of knowledge.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.214.76.233 (talk) 02:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove non-encyclopedic note about Cultural Transmission 

message: I'm sorry, but either it tries to pack too much in, or needs to be streamlined.  A lot of detail is juvenile, with declarations of this or that truth, lacking justification.
In the postmodern section, it's asserted that no serious sociologist believes theory can predict the future.  What foolishness!  While some may take this view, relevance is testable.  Words do not reality make.  Prediction is a very viable approach, indeed its the most productive one.
The Auguste Comte section presents his three-stage theory as a universal.  Not really.  It describes 16th to 19th century France.  
Given how absurd 19th and most 20th century sociological theories appear now, either we're messed up, or sociological theory has a short half-life.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.80.117.214 (talk) 10:23, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is a mess 

message: I begun it erroneusly on the Social Darwinism page. I have now realised that social evolutionism is the right article for this, and moved most of the material I added there here. I will continue with expantion in the sections I sketched, with description of theories by the linked sociologists and anthropologists. I'd appreciate any comments. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 19:41, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expantion 

message: Could we have a hand with this please? Dunc_Harris|☺ 12:14, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[evolutionism]] 

message: This article is the result of a merge of two articles.  It is an important topic, and the article contains much important information.  I think it is a plausible candidate for featured article status, but I think it still needs some editing after the merge, both to sort out what social and cultural theories have in common, and what distinguishes them, Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would oppose featured article status based on the ridiculously long introduction, the excessively lengthy paragraphs, and the unwillingness of the article "owner" to allow others to correct his stylistic errors. It's nearly unreadable. --goethean ॐ 14:38, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

text: If Intelligent Design can be summarized in 2 short paragraphs, there is no reason why sociocultural evolution can't. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that more text in the intro is better. Actually, the opposite is closer to the truth. --goethean ॐ 17:11, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well then, show us your better shorter lead. For now, the 5-para seems to improve little compared to my 3-para version - it mostly splits the 3 paras into 5 and changes the order of few sentences. In addition it does not contain several important ilinks (to social progress, social change and social development concepts). I think my version is easier to understand: it defines the theory in first para, comprares uni and multi in the second one, and gives historical overview in the third. I will wait with restoring my lead for now - perhaos you could explain to me why the new version is bettr? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

text: I find the five paragraphs to be much more readable than the three long ones.  --goethean ॐ 18:59, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: After careful rereading, I do think you managed to shorten the lead without sacrificing much, which does improve the lead. You are also right that there was some confusion with single or plural theories. I did some changes to restore few ilinks/concepts I think must be mentioned in the lead, and I do think we need boled -(ism)s added - just check google for them, both have many thousands of hits. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 10:53, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  feature article candidacy 

message: *The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program. They may or may not be accurate for the article in question (due to possible javascript errors/uniqueness of articles). If the following suggestions are completely incorrect about the article, please drop a note on my talk page.
*Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at WP:LEAD. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article.
*Per WP:CONTEXT and WP:MOSDATE, months and days of the week generally should not be linked (Don't link September or Tuesday unless there is really good reason to). Years, decades, and centuries can be linked if they provide context for the article.
*There may be an applicable infobox for this article.  (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
*Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.
*Please alphabetize the categories and interlanguage links.
* article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail. 
*There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.   
*You may wish to convert your form of references to the cite.php footnote system that WP:WIAFA 2(c) highly recommends.
*Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Wikipedia's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a. 
*You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions (and the javascript checklist; see the last paragraph in the lead) for further ideas. 
*Thanks, Andy t 21:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions 

message: I deleted the claim that some people consider him the father of sociology because thats just not true. I'm uncertain whether any reference to Ibn Khaldun is appropriate.  If he does deserve a mention then the text certainly needs to be improved. (first lines of the Development subsection).  --RedHouse18 02:56, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ibn Khaldun?!? 

message: Yesterday, this article got a category of its own, linking well over fifty pages together. I'm not sure I'm convinced this is a good thing. Especially some of the more abstract articles ('globalization', 'creative destruction') but also some topics that belong to a specific line of thought ('class struggle') would be well covered with a direct link to this article somewhere in or around their defining introduction, or an indirect link via the paradigms they fall in. Classical geographer 20:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Separate category for Sociocultural evolution 

message: This article seems so vague.  If one did a global replace of the terms "Change", "History", or "Development" for the term "Evolution" (and eliminated references to biological evolution) would any of the meaning actually change ?  Are we just trying to appropriate the patina of a successful science (biology) without actually working to develop (NOT evolve) a theory of the evolution of anything specific.
Evolution, it seems to me, is necessarily about change in a population of enttties.  It is not about change in individual entities.  Change in indvidual entities of a population is "learning" or "development".
Furthermore, to mean something specific, evolution should refer to change processes in populations that involve replication, variation, and selection.
This kind of thinking could certainly be applied cultural artifacts, cultural practices, words, proverbs, songs, myths, social groupings.  It seems hard to apply it to populations of societies or of nation states because the "life" of the constituent entities is so long and the entities are so large.
I appreciate that the way the term is being used here has a long history.  I am just not so sure that it has had a sufficiently fruitful history to have earned the right to use the word "evolution" in a way that is so different from the meaning of the term in biology. DCDuring 01:35, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Evolution is used in this context in many academic publications. I do agree that much of it is just semantics, but we should stick with a term that's used in relevant publications.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  20:16, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isn't Evolution a Misnomer in This Context ? 

message: I'm new to Wikipedia and I don't know much about social evolutionism, but I did notice quite a few grammatical errors in this article.  I've taken the liberty of fixing these errors.Hunttthetroll 20:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A small push in the right direction, I hope 

message: Please glance at the following four brief essays and then re-read this note.
I humbly suggest that the underlying, essential thought, of these essays deserves your attention:
- Earth's life is an up-phased matter of the inanimate matter, all matter being essentially a format of constrained energy.
- The cosmos is an evolving energy affair consisting of endless intertwined evolutions.
- Culture is a ubiquitous trait of all matter, the driver of Evolution, of all evolutions. This is an extension of Darwin's and Broken Symmetry concepts. 
- The further comprehension of Culture and Evolution is the essence of the quest for a Unified Field Theory.
Respectfully yours,
Dov Henis  
(A DH Comment From The 22nd Century)
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-P81pQcU1dLBbHgtjQjxG_Q--?cq=1
(1) On Complexity 
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/60/122.page#943
(2) "Broken Symmetry" Is Physics' Term Of Biology's "Evolution"
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/40/122.page#885
(3) More On Forces-Matter-Life Unified Theory 
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/60/122.page#957 
(4) Why 'Life' In Forces-Matter-Life Unified Theory 
http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/60/122.page#963
93.172.231.24 (talk) 05:56, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rethink Unified Field Theory And Evolution

message: I am removing the graph titled "PPTCountdowntoSingularityLog.jpg" from this page and all pages from which it is linked because it is mathematically trivial, as I have demonstrated in . I recommend all future graphs of the "technological singularity" be subject to same scrutiny, as anyone with a year of calculus under their belt can make a similar analysis. If you don't believe me, I encourage you to make a graph with the same axes, but instead of choosing significant "events" as data, choose random dates. You should get identical results. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's concentrate this discussion at Talk:Technological singularity#Removing graph PPTCountdowntoSingularityLinear.jpg. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 20:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  removing graph PPTCountdowntoSingularityLog.jpg 

message: This article does not consider contemporary cultural evolution within archaeology, an important and active area of research and publishing. Some of the following literature should be discussed:
�Adams, Robert McC.  (2001)  Complexity in Archaic States. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20:345-360.
�Drennan, Robert D. and Christian E. Peterson  (2006)  Patterned Variation in Prehistoric Chiefdoms. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103:3960-3967.
�Earle, Timothy  (2002)  Bronze Age Economics: The Beginnings of Political Economies. Westview Press, Boulder, CO.
�Feinman, Gary M. and Linda Manzanilla (editors)  (2000)  Cultural Evolution: Contemporary Viewpoints. Kluwer, New York.
�Johnson, Allen W. and Timothy K. Earle  (2000)  The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. 2nd ed. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
�Marcus, Joyce  (2008)  The Archaeological Evidence for Social Evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology 37:251-266.
�Trigger, Bruce G.  (1998)  Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency. Blackwell, Oxford.
Michael E. Smith (talk) 18:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical discussion is incomplete 

message: I hesitate to save a copy in which a repetitious and poorly written section is entirely removed... so i will leave that up to more invested individuals.  There exist 2 places where the basic definition of Dual Inheritance Theory is introduced, both under the Sociobiology section.  The first one is vague and less well written and contains relatively no additional information and should be removed.  The second section cites specific proponents and authors on the topic and addresses its relative uses etc. and should stay.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.28.18.243 (talk) 01:01, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  SocioBiology Section has two entries on Dual Inheritance but needs only the second one 

message: I am really unpleased with the section on "Organic society." First of all, there are no citations. Second of all, there are other points of view relating Christianity and the Age of Enlightenment. Some say that Christianity actually went AGAINST the "society as eternal decline from paradisaical past" meta-narrative in favor of "society as infinite progression to paradisaical future." If this were the case, then the latter might have taken up its optimism from the former. However, I am not an expert and I do not remember the sources of this alternative view. In any case, someone please provide citations.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiikee345 (talk • contribs) 00:59, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Organic society" citations needed and alternative view 

message: It is pretty bad that "cultural evolution" redirects here. Note that "culture" and "society" are quite different things.  Ants have society without culture. Social evolution is one concept and cultural evolution is a different concept with a different meaning. There is already an article on Social_evolution. Surely there should also be an article on cultural evolution.  Indeed there used to be an article on cultural evolution - but it got deleted (and merged with this one) in 2005. No, the article on memetics doesn't cover it - evolution and genetics are different topics.
In a search duel, "cultural evolution" beats "sociocultural evolution" by about 20 to 1. Wikipedia is foolishly fighting a strong tide here. Why should Wikipedia mislead everyone about the actual fields involved, one wonders. TylerTim (talk) 17:28, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Start a cultural evolution page with RSs that call it cultural evolution. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 18:17, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cultural evolution should have its own article 

message: Is there a competing, contemporary account of sociocultural change? The other theories listed are all from an earlier era. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 18:24, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  dual-inheritance theory 

message: "Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or cultural evolution are theories of cultural and social evolution "
Are we really saying that "...cultural evolution [is a] theor[y] of cultural and social evolution"? Is anyone watching this page? It needs help. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 18:38, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  first sentence 

message: Auguste Comte is identified in the entry as the "father" of Sociology. There is no demand for a footnote identifying the source. Later, Lester Frank Ward is identified as the "father" of American Sociology and there is a demand for a citation in support of the assertion. It would seem that if Ward's paternity requires proving so too Comte must be backed by an appropriate source. Now if Comte's intellectual paternity is acknowledged as universally known within the field and so citation is waived then Ward's intellectual paternity is just as well known, at least in American sociology.
LAWinans (talk) 03:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intellectual Paternity ? 

message: I have deleted a template and its accompanying note as they were:
*unhelpful (if the introduction/lede required changing to cover the note then change it)
*in the wrong place (the note should have been on the Talk page)
The note was as follows:
 Note, this article focusses on that use of the term 'socio-cultural evolution' to refer to work that is not in line with contemporary understandings of the word 'evolution'.  There is a separate body of academic work which uses the term 'cultural evolution' using a more consensus Darwinian understanding of the term 'evolution'.  For a description of this work, based in the foundational work of DT Campbell in the 1960s and followed up by Boyd, Richerson, Cavalli-Sforza, and Feldman in the 1980s, go to Cultural evolution or Dual inheritance theory.)
I have now included a See also link to Cultural evolution (one to Dual inheritance theory was already there).  
The remainder of the note's contents appears already to have been addressed in the article. 
LookingGlass (talk) 20:49, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Intellectual vandalism 

message: Last year someone proposed it, but didn't bother to write up a rationale. I am endorsing it, and since Cultural evolutionism last revision is a poorly referenced fork of this, I am just going to boldly redirect it here (for the record, I was the original author of the SCE article 10 years ago, and I created the CE redirect back then too). Can't say I am impressed by what happened to the said redirect. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:54, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge [[Cultural evolutionism]] here