Revolution and Evolution: Why Those Seeking Social Change Should Understand Adaptationism
In modern evolutionary biology there is a core concept known as adaptationism (or functionalism). Adaptationism seeks to explain a trait’s existence by describing the adaptive function it serves.
In other words, adaptationism proposes that the most likely explanation for why a particular trait was conserved (i.e., persisted over time), is the one that best demonstrates why it would be adaptive — that is, why the trait serves to increase individual or group fitness. For example, it is hypothesized that dinosaurs first developed feathers for thermoregulation, and later some species developed more specialized feathers — such as those that enhanced gliding abilities. In this case, feathers served a primary adaptive function — to insulate the body; this and other, secondary functions (sexual signaling, gliding enhancement, etc.) helped ensure that the trait was preserved after it appeared.
Cultures, in many ways, are analogous to organisms — a fact that is illustrated well by Richard Dawkin’s concept of a meme, or a unit of cultural information that is analogous to a gene in biology. Due to these analogical similarities we can often develop an understanding of cultures and cultural phenomena by appealing to evolutionary principles.
