Comment on Radek Kundt's "Contemporary evolutionary theories of culture and the study of religion"

Title: Comment on Radek Kundt's "Contemporary evolutionary theories of culture and the study of religion"
Author: Wunn, Ina
Source document: Religio. 2016, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. [53]-63
Extent
[53]-63
  • ISSN
    1210-3640 (print)
    2336-4475 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

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Abstract(s)
This review article highlights an important approach in the science of religion: it not only values Radek Kundt's very learned critique of commonly used evolutionary accounts, including the so-called "Evolutionary Study of Culture Without Cultural Evolution" (EWCE) acounts based on cognitive approaches, but also illustrates the reason for their deficiency – a lack of biological knowledge about evolution, and, as a result, the failure to address the question of the evolving unit. Just this question – what is evolving, and why – is only touched on by Kundt. The enormous value of the book, however, lies in the fact that the popular (but wrong) thesis of an existing form of group selection is rebutted and unmasked: accounts of group selection do not offer more than "poor metaphor and misleading analogy".