240 Wybo Houkes
- Recently some researchers have argued that there might also be design problems that can be solved only by
ED methods (Thompson 2002). - In the description of one leading journal, one fi nds the following description of the fi eld: “Characteristic for
man-designed computing inspired by nature is the metaphorical use of concepts, principles and mechanisms
underlying natural systems” (source: online description of the international journal Natural Computing on
SpringerLink). - See, e.g., many of the essays in Kumar and Bentley (2003b).
- The accuracy aim is sometimes made explicit, e.g.: “[This model of development for evolutionary design] is
intended to model biological development very closely in order to discover the key components of development
and their potential for computer science” (Kumar and Bentley 2003a: 57; emphasis added). Yet this quote is
taken from a paper that carries “biologically inspired” in its title, and “biologically plausible” in the reference
on Peter Bentley’s Web site! - See Renfrew and Bahn (2004), especially ch. 12, for an overview of various archaeological methods.
- In the following, I mainly rely on one particular line of work in EA, that of R. Lee Lyman, Michael O’Brien,
and various cooperators. - Some researchers admit that functional features may also be useful for these purposes (e.g., O’Brien and
Leonard 2001: 5–6). - “[A]rtifacts are stylistically similar as a result of cultural transmission” (Lyman and O’Brien 2000: 44).
- For example, “The Darwinian mechanisms of selection and transmission... provide exactly what culture
historians were looking for: the tools to begin explaining cultural lineages” (O’Brien and Lyman 2002: 35);
“Only with explicit adoption of the tenets of Darwinian evolutionary theory has it become clear why historical
types behave the way they do” (Lyman and O’Brien 2000: 47). - This nonintentionalism occasionally turns into anti-intentionalism, e.g.: “It is increasingly common to
explain human outcomes in terms of the intentions of the agents involved. Unfortunately, this leads to a vitalistic
explanation of little merit.... [T]here is a signifi cant discrepancy between intentions and outcomes. Every pre-
historic farmer who ever put hoe or digging stick to earth intended success. Many failed. To explain the success
of the successful in terms of their intentions is absurd. They were successful not because of their intentions but
because of the particular variant they generated, the vagaries of chance and the operation of natural selection”
(O’Brien and Leonard 2001: 26). This argument is puzzling, for it changes the explanandum of EA from “human
outcomes” to successful outcomes. Furthermore, this argument addresses functional features and selection rather
than stylistic features and cultural transmission, which are central to the explanatory project of EA. In cultural
transmission, (partial) failure seems just as important for explaining stylistic variation as success is for explaining
stylistic continuity. - The error margins of dating methods in archaeology actually may be too large to make reliable statements
of this kind. - Early papers in EA suggest that functional features are easily distinguished within the archaeological record
because they would show a “directional increase.” This is now widely admitted to be false: the frequency of
stylistic features may show the same directionality (O’Brien and Leonard 2001: 8–9). Still, most researchers in
EA maintain that styles “should behave randomly in relation to the selective environment” (Hurt and Rakita
2001: xxvi). - This rough characterization of homologies and analogies is similar to that given by Mayr (2001).
- An introduction to cladistics, the problems in constructing reliable cladograms, and the advantages of cla-
distics over other methods of biological classifi cation can be found in Ridley (1996, chs. 14 and 17). - Constructing a cladogram is not even a very important fi rst step in EA. Following the so-called Ford-Spauld-
ing debate of the 1950s, most (evolutionary) archaeologists do not believe in objective artifact kinds; instead
they maintain that classifi cation depends on the interests of the archaeologists. Thus cladograms do not show
real artifact kinds but are ways of classifying artifacts such that cultural transmission can be studied. - Lyman and O’Brien sometimes praise cladistics for this neutrality, e.g.: “It depends solely on heritable con-
tinuity, irrespective of the mode of transmission” (O’Brien and Lyman 2002: 30). - The tasks described here resemble those described by Lewens (2004) in evaluating the applicability of the
“artefact model” in biology.