THEORY OF CULTURAL AND SOCIAL REVOLUTION AS VIEWED BY WALTER GARRISON RUNCIMAN

Abstract

Walter Garrison Runciman’s recent work The Theory of Cultural and Social Selection is a new attempt to create a sociological theory of evolution based on neodarwinism. It is also an important step extending beyond the previous propositions of dual inheritance theory as well as memetics. However, selectionism, a paradigm developed in it by the use of simplified evolutionary biology, requires a reduction of a society to simple population of heritable units of selection and a similar reduction of culture. Runciman has failed to convincingly integrate the neodarwinian populational approach with his own sociological system. One of the main reason for his failure is, in my opinion, his radical break with the classical tradition of sociology.