What kinds of things fall within the scope of evolutionary theory? One view holds that evolutionary theory concerns how populations of biological entities (such as genes, organisms, and species) change over successive generations. Another view maintains that evolutionary theory deals with how populations of any kind change over successive generations. This latter view is implicit in the vast literature on cultural evolution, a literature that addresses the evolution of such diverse things as religious beliefs, scientific theories, social norms, vocabulary, technologies, agricultural techniques, and corporate practices. Most generally, “cultural evolution” refers to the various ways that an evolutionary perspective may be applied to the study of culture and society.

As the term “evolution” has acquired various meanings, the term “cultural evolution” is also employed in several ways. For nineteenth-century thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan (Fig. 53.1), “evolution” was synonymous with “progress” or “development.” These thinkers posited natural laws of cultural evolution whereby human societies all pass through the same sequence of developmental stages, from primitive to civilized. Their theories of cultural evolution bear little connection to evolution as Darwin understood it, and they have long been discredited.