Footnote:
In: Economics and Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, eds. A. Namatame, T. Kaizouji, Y. Aruka, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer, 2005
Description:
A general theory of cultural evolution is formulated using a cognitive dimension reduction scheme. Rational but cognitively limited agents iteratively invent and redefine abstract concepts in order to best represent their natural and social environment. These concepts are used for decision making and determine the agents' overall behavior. The collection of concepts an agent uses constitutes his/her cultural profile. As the importance of social interactions increase and/or agents become more intelligent we find a series of dynamical phase transitions by which the coherence of concepts advances in the society. Our model explains the so-called "cultural explosion in human evolution" 50,000 years ago as a spontaneous ordering phenomenon of the individual mental representations