English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Autocatalytic networks have been used to model the emergence ofself-organizing structure capable of sustaining life and undergoing biologicalevolution. Here, we model the emergence of cognitive structure capable ofundergoing cultural evolution. Mental representations of knowledge andexperiences play the role of catalytic molecules, and interactions amongst them(e.g., the forging of new associations) play the role of reactions, and resultin representational redescription. The approach tags mental representationswith their source, i.e., whether they were acquired through social learning,individual learning (of pre-existing information), or creative thought(resulting in the generation of new information). This makes it possible tomodel how cognitive structure emerges, and to trace lineages of cumulativeculture step by step. We develop a formal representation of the culturaltransition from Oldowan to Acheulean tool technology using ReflexivelyAutocatalytifc and Food set generated (RAF) networks. Unlike more primitiveOldowan stone tools, the Acheulean hand axe required not only the capacity toenvision and bring into being something that did not yet exist, buthierarchically structured thought and action, and the generation of new mentalrepresentations: the concepts EDGING, THINNING, SHAPING, and a meta-concept,HAND AXE. We show how this constituted a key transition towards the emergenceof semantic networks that were self-organizing, self-sustaining, andautocatalytic, and discuss how such networks replicated through socialinteraction. The model provides a promising approach to unraveling one of thegreatest anthropological mysteries: that of why development of the Acheuleanhand axe was followed by over a million years of cultural stasis.

Modeling a Cognitive Transition at the Origin of Cultural Evolution using Autocatalytic Networks