Krist Vaesen
Guest Staff Member
- Name
- Dr.ir. K. Vaesen
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2727
- k.vaesen@arch.leidenuniv.nl
Cultural evolution theory
Vaesen, a researcher in the
Philosophy & Ethics group, addresses the trend in which cultural phenomena such as language, technology and religion are described using methods from evolutionary biology – even though culture actually makes a distinction between man and other biological species. For example Vaesen observes the use of evolutionary trees akin to the tree of life to describes the development of arrowheads or subsistence agriculture.
‘Darwinization’
Vaesen believes this ‘Darwinization of culture’ in scientific research should be treated with caution because, in contrast with biology, in the field of culture the applicability of biological methods to cultural phenomena has never been studied critically. He is the first researcher to tackle this problem. He uses a statistical method to examine whether the biological models still produce the same results if the original assumptions change.
Guest Staff Member
- Faculteit Archeologie
- World Archaeology
- Human Origins
- MacDonald K., Scherjon F., Veen E. van, Vaesen K., Roebroeks W. & Bakels C.C. (2021), Middle Pleistocene fire use: the first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118(31): e2101108118.
- Vaesen K., Dusseldorp G.L. & Brandt M. (2021), An emerging consensus in palaeoanthropology: demography was the main factor responsible for the disappearance of Neanderthals, Scientific Reports 11: 4925.
- Vaesen K., Scherjon F., Hemerik L. & Verpoorte A. (2019), Inbreeding, Allee effects and stochasticity might be sufficient to account for Neanderthal extinction, PLoS ONE 14(11): e0225117.
- Vaesen K. & Katzav J. (2017), How much would each researcher receive if competitive government research funding were distributed equally among researchers?, PLoS ONE 12(9): e0183967.
- Katzav J. & Vaesen K. (2017), On the emergence of American analytic philosophy, BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 25(4): 772-798.
- Katzav J. & Vaesen K. (2017), Pluralism and Peer Review in Philosophy, Philosophers Imprint 17(19): 1-20.
- Vaesen K., Collard M., Cosgrove R. & Roebroeks J.W.M. (2016), Reply to Henrich et al.: the Tasmanian effect and other red herrings, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(44): E6726-E6727.
- Vaesen K., Collard M., Cosgrove R. & Roebroeks W. (2016), The Tasmanian effect and other red herrings, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: .
- Vaesen K., Collard M., Cosgrove R. & Roebroeks W. (2016), Population size does not explain past changes in cultural complexity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113: .
- Collard M., Vaesen K., Cosgrove R. & Roebroeks W. (2016), The empirical case against the “demographic turn” in Palaeolithic archaeology, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371(1698): 20150242.