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Evolving the future: Toward a science
of intentional change
David Sloan Wilson
Departments of Biology and Anthropology, Binghamton University,
Binghamton, NY 13903
dwilson@binghamton.edu
http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/
Steven C. Hayes
Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557-0062
stevenchayes@gmail.com
http://stevenchayes.com/
Anthony Biglan
Oregon Research Institute, Eugene, OR 97403
tony@ori.org
http://promiseneighborhoods.org/about/people.html
Dennis D. Embry
PAXIS Institute, Tucson, AZ 85751
dde@paxis.org
http://www.paxis.org/content/DennisBio.aspx
Abstract: Humans possess great capacity for behavioral and cultural change, but our ability to manage change is still limited. This article
has two major objectives: first, to sketch a basic science of intentional change centered on evolution; second, to provide examples of
intentional behavioral and cultural change from the applied behavioral sciences, which are largely unknown to the basic sciences
community.
All species have evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that enable them to respond adaptively to their environments. Some
mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity count as evolutionary processes in their own right. The human capacity for symbolic thought
provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody
formation. Taking these propositions seriously allows an integration of major traditions within the basic behavioral sciences, such as
behaviorism, social constructivism, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology, which are often isolated and
even conceptualized as opposed to one another.
The applied behavioral sciences include well-validated examples of successfully managing behavioral and cultural change at scales
ranging from individuals to small groups to large populations. However, these examples are largely unknown beyond their disciplinary
boundaries, for lack of a unifying theoretical framework. Viewed from an evolutionary perspective, they are examples of managing
evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity, including open-ended processes of variation and selection.
Once the many branches of the basic and applied behavioral sciences become conceptually unified, we are closer to a science of
intentional change than one might think.
Keywords: acceptance and commitment therapy; applied behavioral sciences; cultural evolution; evolution; evolutionary psychology;
prevention science; standard social science model
1. Introduction
Change is the mantra of modern life. We embrace change
as a virtue but are desperate to escape from undesired
changes that appear beyond our control. We crave positive
change at all levels: individuals seeking to improve them-
selves, neighborhoods seeking a greater sense of commu-
nity, nations attempting to function as corporate units,
the multinational community attempting to manage the
global economy and the environment.
Science should be an important agent of change, and it
is; but it is responsible for as many unwanted changes as
those we desire. Even the desired changes can be like
wishes granted in folk tales, which end up regretted in ret-
rospect. Despite some notable successes, some of which we
highlight in this article, our ability to change our behavioral
and cultural practices lags far behind our ability to manip-
ulate the physical environment. No examples of scientifi-
cally guided social change can compare to putting a man
on the moon.
In this article we ask what a science of positive behavioral
and cultural change would look like and what steps might
be required to achieve it. We begin with the basic sugges-
tion that evolution must be at the center of any science of
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37, 395–460
doi:10.1017/S0140525X13001593
© Cambridge University Press 2014 0140-525X/14 $40.00 395

change. After all, the study of evolution is the study of how
organisms change in relation to their environments, not
only by genetics but also by mechanisms of phenotypic
plasticity that evolved by genetic evolution, including
some that count as evolutionary processes in their own
right (Calvin 1987; Jablonka & Lamb 2006; Richerson &
Boyd 2005). A solid foundation in evolutionary theory can
also help us understand why some changes we desire,
which count as adaptations in the evolutionary sense of
the word, can turn out to be bad for long-term human
welfare. Left unmanaged, evolutionary processes often
take us where we would prefer not to go. The only solution
to this problem is to become wise managers of evolutionary
processes (Wilson 2011c).
The first step –appreciating the central importance of
evolution –reveals how many steps remain to achieve a
mature science of behavioral and cultural change. The
study of evolution in relation to human affairs has a long
and tortuous history that led many to abandon and even
oppose the enterprise altogether (Ehrenreich & McIntosh
1997; Sahlins 1976; Segerstrale 2001). Using evolution to
inform public policy earned such a bad reputation that
“social Darwinism”came to signify the justification of
social inequality (Hofstadter 1959/1992; Leonard 2009).
Evolution became a pariah concept to avoid as a conceptual
foundation for the study of human behavior and culture for
most of the twentieth century. The implicit assumption was
that evolution explained the rest of life, our physical bodies,
and a few basic instincts such as the urge to eat and have
sex, but had little to say about our rich behavioral and cul-
tural diversity.
The reception to E. O. Wilson’s1975 book Sociobiology
provides an example of this intellectual apartheid. The
purpose of Sociobiology was to show that a single science
of social behavior could apply to all species, from microbes
to insects to primates. It was celebrated as a triumph except
for the final chapter on humans, which created a storm
of controversy (Segerstrale 2001). Only during the late
1980s did terms such as evolutionary psychology and
evolutionary anthropology enter the scientific lexicon,
signifying a renewed attempt to place the study of human
behavior and culture on an evolutionary foundation.
As a result, an enormous amount of integration must
occur before a science of human behavioral and cultural
change can center on evolution. This integration needs to
be a two-way street, involving not only contributions of
evolutionary theory to the human-related disciplines but
also the reverse. For example, core evolutionary theory
needs to expand beyond genetics to include other inheri-
tance systems, such as environmentally induced changes
in gene expression (epigenetics), mechanisms of social
learning found in many species, and the human capacity
for symbolic thought that results in an almost unlimited
variety of cognitive constructions, each motivating a suite
of behaviors subject to selection (Jablonka & Lamb 2006;
Penn et al. 2008).
We will argue that the first steps toward integration, rep-
resented by a configuration of ideas that most people
associate with evolutionary psychology, was only the begin-
ning and in some ways led in the wrong direction. In par-
ticular, the polarized distinction between evolutionary
psychology and the standard social science model (Pinker
1997;2002; Tooby & Cosmides 1992) was a wrong turn
we must correct. A mature EP needs to include elements
of the SSSM associated with major thinkers such as
Emile Durkheim, B. F. Skinner, and Clifford Geertz.
Only when we depolarize the distinction between EP and
the SSSM can a science of change occur (Bolhuis et al.
2011; Buller 2005; Scher & Rauscher 2002; Wilson 2002b).
In section 2 of this article we will attempt to accomplish
this depolarization to provide a broader evolutionary foun-
dation for the human behavioral and social sciences. In
section 3 we will review examples of scientifically based
and validated programs that accomplish change on three
DAVID SLOAN WILSON, SUNY Distinguished Professor
of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University,
is president of the Evolution Institute (http://evolution-
institute.org), which formulates public policy from an
evolutionary perspective. He has made fundamental
contributions to evolutionary theory in addition to
helping to expand evolutionary thought beyond the bio-
logical sciences. His books include Darwin’s Cathedral,
Evolution for Everyone,The Neighborhood Project, and
the forthcoming Does Altruism Exist?
STEVEN C. HAYES, Foundation Professor and director
of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at
the University of Nevada, Reno, is author of 36 books
and more than 500 scientific articles. His career has
focused on an analysis of the nature of human language
and cognition and their application to human prosperity.
Hayes has been president of the Association for Behav-
ioral and Cognitive Therapy (ABCT) and the Associ-
ation for Contextual Behavioral Science. He received
the Impact of Science on Application Award from the
Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis and
the Lifetime Achievement Award from ABCT.
ANTHONY BIGLAN, senior scientist at Oregon Research
Institute in Eugene, Oregon, has been conducting
research for more than 30 years on the development
and prevention of child and adolescent problem behav-
ior. He has conducted numerous evaluations of inter-
ventions to prevent tobacco use, high-risk sexual and
antisocial behavior, and academic failure. He is former
president of the Society for Prevention Research, and
as part of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Pre-
vention co-wrote a report documenting numerous evi-
dence-based preventive interventions. His forthcoming
book, The Nurture Effect (New Harbinger Publications)
elaborates on the kind of cultural evolution discussed in
this target article.
DENNIS D. EMBRY is president and senior scientist at
PAXIS Institute in Tucson, Arizona. As a prevention
scientist, he has invented and launched population-
level projects in multiple countries to avert or reduce
multiple human problems, from child pedestrian inju-
ries to violent injuries, from post-traumatic stress to
negative behavior in schools, from tobacco use to mul-
tiple mental illnesses. His projects integrate multiple
theories from behavior analysis, including relational
frame theory, child development, evolution/anthropol-
ogy, neuroscience, epigenetics, social determinants,
and marketing. The Society for Prevention Research
has honored him for putting prevention science into
practice across North America.
Wilson et al.: Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change
396 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:4

scales: individuals, small groups, and large populations.
We draw these examples from branches of the applied
behavioral sciences that, like diamonds in the sand, have
remained largely hidden from evolutionary science and
the basic human behavioral sciences. The examples
provide a much needed body of empirical information to
balance evolutionary theorizing, which is frequently criti-
cized for remaining at the speculative “just so”storytelling
stage. Indeed, the randomized control trials and other high-
quality real-world experiments described in section 2 can
be regarded as a refined variation-and-selection process
with faster and more accurate feedback on effectiveness
than other mechanisms of cultural evolution. When
viewed from an evolutionary perspective, they emerge as
examples of wisely managing evolutionary processes to
accomplish significant improvement in human well-being.
We are closer to a science of intentional change than one
might think.
2. Toward a basic science of change
The ability to change behavioral and cultural practices in
practical terms can profit from a basic scientific under-
standing of behavioral and cultural change. The human be-
havioral sciences are currently in disarray on the subject of
change. Every discipline has its own configuration of ideas
that seldom relate to other disciplines or to modern evol-
utionary science. We will focus on a major dichotomy
that all human-related disciplines must confront: On the
one hand, human behavior and culture appear elaborately
flexible. On the other, as with all species, the human
brain is an elaborate product of genetic evolution. These
two facts often appear in opposition to each other, as if
evolution implies genetic determinism, which in turn
implies an incapacity for change over short time intervals.
Once this misformulation is accepted, then the capacity
for short-term change becomes conceptualized as outside
the orbit of evolutionary theory.
Although the tension between genetic innateness and
the capacity for short-term change exists in all branches
of the human behavioral sciences, we will focus on two
major branches: the behaviorist tradition associated with
B. F. Skinner and the configuration of ideas that arose in
the late 1980s under the label evolutionary psychology.
Those merit special attention because of the history of
the behaviorist tradition in academic psychology, even
before EP made the scene, and because EP came about
in a way that seemed to exclude the standard social
science model (SSSM) centered on behaviorism in psychol-
ogy and so-called blank slate traditions in anthropology
associated with figures such as Durkheim and Geertz
(e.g., Pinker 1997;2002; Tooby & Cosmides 1992). Recon-
ciling the differences between the behaviorist tradition and
EP can go a long way toward reconciling the apparent
paradox of genetic innateness and the capacity for short-
term change in all branches of the human behavioral
sciences.
2.1. B. F. Skinner: Evolutionary psychologist
In the abstract of his influential article “Selection by Con-
sequences,”Skinner framed his version of behaviorism in
terms of evolution:
Selection by consequences is a causal mode found only in living
things, or in machines made by living things. It was first recog-
nized in natural selection, but it also accounts for the shaping
and maintenance of the behavior of the individual and the evol-
ution of cultures. In all three of these fields, it replaces expla-
nations based on the causal modes of classical mechanics. The
replacement is strongly resisted. Natural selection has now
made its case, but similar delays in recognizing the role of selec-
tion in the other fields could deprive us of valuable help in
solving the problems which confront us. (Skinner 1981, p. 501)
Although the term evolutionary psychology had not yet
been coined, Skinner’s passage leaves no doubt that he
regarded the open-ended capacity for behavioral and cul-
tural change as both (1) a product of genetic evolution
and (2) an evolutionary process in its own right. It is there-
fore ironic that when Tooby and Cosmides (1992) formu-
lated their version of EP, they set it apart from the SSSM
that included the Skinnerian tradition (see also Pinker
1997;2002).
Long before Tooby and Cosmides’s version of EP made
the scene, the so-called cognitive revolution had largely dis-
placed behaviorism in academic psychology. Cognitive the-
orists stressed that the enormous complexity of the mind
needed direct study, in contrast to Skinner’s insistence on
focusing on the functional relations of environment and be-
havior (Brewer 1974; Bruner 1973). The central metaphor
of the cognitive revolution was that the mind is like a com-
puter that we must understand in mechanistic detail to
know how it works. However, those who study computers
would never restrict themselves to input–output relation-
ships: They would study the machinery and the software.
Cognitive psychologists faulted behaviorists for not follow-
ing the same path.
One of the seeds of the cognitive revolution, which took
root in Tooby and Cosmides’s version of EP, was a chal-
lenge to what most perceived to be the extreme domain
generality of behavioral approaches. An example is
Martin Seligman’s(1970)influential article on the “general-
ity of the laws of learning.”Seligman reviewed a body of
evidence showing that the parameters of learning processes
had to be viewed in light of the evolutionary preparedness
of organisms to relate particular events. For example, taste
aversion (Garcia et al. 1966) challenged the idea that imme-
diacy per se is key in stimulus pairings in classical condition-
ing, because illness could follow by tens of hours and still
induce aversion to ecologically sensible food-related cues.
Seligman recognized that this kind of specialized learning
could evolve by altering the parameters of classical con-
ditioning, but his preferred interpretation was that
general learning processes themselves were not useful:
“[W]e have reason to suspect that the laws of learning dis-
covered using lever pressing and salivation may not hold”
(p. 417).
Even more important was the conclusion that no general
process account was possible in the area of human language
and cognition. Pointing to evidence that seemed to show
that human language requires no elaborate training for its
production, Seligman concluded, “instrumental and classi-
cal conditioning are not adequate for an analysis of
language”(p. 414). What interests us in this context is
how these concerns quickly led to abandoning the idea
that general learning process accounts were possible. For
example, in an influential chapter that helped launch the
“cognitive revolution,”William Brewer (1974) concluded,
Wilson et al.: Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:4 397

“all the results of the traditional conditioning literature are
due to the operation of higher mental processes, as
assumed in cognitive theory, and…there is not and never
has been any convincing evidence for unconscious, auto-
matic mechanisms in the conditioning of adult human
beings”(p. 27, italics added).
The concern over the limits of domain generality in
cognitive psychology redoubled as EP arrived as a self-
described discipline, including the influential volume The
Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Gener-
ation of Culture (Barkow et al. 1992; see also Pinker
1997;2002). The thrust of EP was that the mind is
neither a blank slate nor a general-purpose computer.
The mind is a collection of many special-purpose compu-
ters that evolved genetically to solve specific problems
pertaining to survival and reproduction in ancestral
environments. This claim became known as “massive mod-
ularity”(Buller 2005; Buller & Hardcastle 2000; Carruthers
2006; Fodor 1983;2000).
Tooby and Cosmides’s(1992) chapter in The Adapted
Mind, titled “The Psychological Foundations of Culture,”
which did much to define the field of EP, described
domain-general learning (the applicability of general cogni-
tive processes, whether viewed behaviorally or cognitively)
as nearly a theoretical impossibility. Too many environ-
mental inputs can be processed in too many ways for
a domain-general learning machine to work, whether
designed by humans or by natural selection. The most intel-
ligent machines humans have designed are highly task
specific. Tax preparation software provides a good
example: It requires exactly the right environmental input,
which it processes in exactly the right way, to calculate
one’s taxes accurately. It is impressively flexible at its specific
task but utterly incapable of doing anything else. According
to Tooby and Cosmides, natural selection is constrained just
as human engineers are in creating complex machines or
programming software, leaving massive modularity as the
only theoretical possibility for the design of the mind.
In discussing cultural evolution, Tooby and Cosmides
observed that behavioral differences among human popu-
lations do not necessarily signify the cultural transmission
of learned information. Instead, they can reflect massively
modular minds responding to different environmental
cues without any learning or social transmission whatso-
ever. They called this instinctive response to the environ-
ment “evoked”culture, in contrast to the social
transmission of learned information, or “transmitted”
culture. They did not deny the existence of transmitted
culture, but had little to say about it.
An article titled “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer”
(Cosmides & Tooby 1997) pares their vision to its bare
essentials. The human mind is described as “a set of infor-
mation-processing machines that were designed by natural
selection to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-
gatherer ancestors.”Because our modern skull houses a
Stone-Age mind, “the key to understanding how the
modern mind works is to realize that its circuits were not
designed to solve the day-to-day problems of a modern
American –they were designed to solve the day-to-day pro-
blems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.”Evolutionary
psychology is described as “relentlessly past-oriented”–
meaning our genetic past, not our cultural or individual past.
In this fashion, the concept of elaborate innateness that
became associated with EP sat in opposition to the open-
ended capacity for change that became associated with
what Tooby and Cosmides branded the SSSM. In our
opinion, this is a profound mistake needing correction to
achieve an integrated science of change.
2.2. Evolution as a domain-general process
Ironically, although Tooby and Cosmides praised genetic
evolution as a domain-general process, capable of adapting
organisms to virtually any environment, they failed to gen-
eralize this insight to include other evolutionary processes.
If they had, their critique of the “blank slate”traditions in
the human behavioral sciences would have appeared in a
new light.
Evolutionists routinely rely upon a blank slate assump-
tion of their own when they reason about adaptation and
natural selection. They predict the adaptations that would
evolve by natural selection, given heritable variation and a
sufficient number of generations. For example, they confi-
dently predict that many species inhabiting desert environ-
ments will evolve to be sandy colored to conceal themselves
from their predators and prey. This prediction can be made
without any knowledge of the genes or physical compo-
sition of the species. Insofar as the physical makeup of
organisms results in heritable variation, that is the extent
to which it can be ignored in predicting the molding
action of natural selection. The phenotypic properties of
organisms are caused by selection and merely permitted
by heritable variation (Campbell 1990; Wilson 1988).
Evolutionists know that heritable variation is not omni-
present and a sufficient number of generations often has
not elapsed for species to become fully adapted to their
environments. Hence, they easily back away from their
blank slate assumption. A fully rounded evolutionary per-
spective requires equal attention to functional design, prox-
imate mechanisms, developmental pathways, and
phylogenetic histories (Tinbergen 1963). Nevertheless,
blank slate adaptationist reasoning remains one of the
most powerful tools in the evolutionary toolkit, and
Tooby and Cosmides use it liberally to develop their
vision of EP.
The point that Skinner was making with his key phrase
“selection by consequences”was that evolution goes
beyond genetic evolution. Insofar as individual learning
and cultural change count as evolutionary processes, a
blank slate assumption can be made about what evolves
on the basis of the molding action of selection, which is per-
mitted but not caused by the proximate mechanisms under-
lying the evolutionary processes (what Skinner called
“causal modes of classical mechanics”in the abstract
quoted above). This is also what Durkheim perceived for
cultural evolution when he wrote in 1895 that “individual
natures are merely the indeterminate material that the
social factor molds and transforms”(Durkeim 1895/1982,
p. 106). These insights are fully justified from an evolution-
ary perspective, to the extent that learning and cultural
change qualify as evolutionary processes.
Against this background, debates about the existence of
domain-general cognitive mechanisms can be seen to be
largely misplaced. Genetic evolution is a domain-general
process, but the mechanisms of genetic inheritance are
many and specific in their functions (e.g., error correction
mechanisms, transcription mechanisms). The question is
not whether the mechanisms qualify as domain general,
Wilson et al.: Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change
398 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:4

but whether they result in heritable variation, which allows
the evolutionary process to be domain general. These
points apply to learning and culture as well as genetic evol-
ution. Tooby and Cosmides could be correct about massive
modularity and still would be wrong to reject the blank slate
assumption for learning and culture –insofar as massive
modularity leads to nongenetic mechanisms of inheritance.
In short, the error of theorists such as Cosmides and
Tooby was to ignore (or at least greatly downplay) the possi-
bility that the complex special-purpose adaptations that
evolved by genetic evolution resulted in nongenetic mech-
anisms of inheritance, capable of rapidly adapting people to
their current environments in a domain-general fashion.
When this error is corrected, the blank slate traditions rep-
resented by authors such as Skinner and Durkheim can be
seen as fully compatible with modern evolutionary theory.
It is not our purpose to argue that EP is totally in error
or that the blank slate traditions are right in every detail,
however. The point is to establish a middle ground that
includes the valid elements of both positions –to depolarize
the distinction between EP and the SSSM.
Apart from the particular school of thought known as EP,
there is a long tradition of thinking about the immune
system, brain development, learning, culture, and science
(as a particular form of culture) as evolutionary processes
that result in adaptations to current environments accord-
ing to their respective criteria of selection (e.g., Boyd &
Richerson 1985; Calvin 1987; Campbell 1960; Edelman
1988; Edelman & Tononi 2000; Farmer & Packard 1987;
Jablonka & Lamb 2006; Plotkin 1994;2003;2007; Richer-
son & Boyd 2005; Wilson 1990;1995). Evolutionary pro-
cesses that rely on nongenetic inheritance mechanisms
either evolved genetically or were created by humans, as
Skinner appreciated in the abstract quoted above. The
term Darwin machine aptly describes an evolutionary
process built by evolution (Calvin 1987; Plotkin 1994).
The word Darwin signifies that an open-ended process of
variation and selection is at work, capable of producing
adaptations to current environments that might never
have previously existed. The word machine here means
only in the limited sense that complex but systematic pro-
cesses are required to create heritable phenotypic variation
and to select traits that are genetically adaptive on average.
(We caution against other connotations of the word that do
not capture the open-ended nature of “Darwin machine.”)
Properly understood, these two words reconcile the appar-
ent paradox of genetic innateness and the capacity for
open-ended change over the short term.
2.3. Learning from the immune system about
evolutionary psychology
By far, the best understood Darwin machine is the ver-
tebrate immune system. It is a fabulously complex set of
adaptations that evolved genetically to protect organisms
against disease. It has many hallmarks of massive modular-
ity, but it also has the open-ended capacity to rapidly evolve
new defenses in the form of antibodies. If we can think
about the human capacity for behavioral and cultural
change as we do the immune system, we can begin to
provide an appropriately broad foundation for a science
of intentional change.
Immunologists distinguish between the innate and the
adaptive components of the immune system (see Sompayrac
2008 for an excellent tutorial). The innate component is
massively modular, much as Tooby and Cosmides describe
for human psychology. Macrophages can sense and engulf
foreign particles, for example, but they have no capacity to
change their sensory abilities. The innate component of
the immune system protects against most disease organisms
but is helpless against those that manage to evade its auto-
mated defenses.
The adaptive component of the immune system includes
the ability to create roughly 100 million different anti-
bodies. Each antibody is like a highly specialized hand
that can grab onto a narrow range of molecular shapes. Col-
lectively, the 100 million antibodies can grab onto nearly
any conceivable organic surface. When a given antibody
grabs onto an invading disease organism, it signals the
innate component of the immune system to attack; the anti-
body itself acts only as a tag. Simultaneously, the B-cells
producing the antibody are stimulated to reproduce and
to ramp up their production. A single B-cell in full pro-
duction mode can produce about 2,000 unattached anti-
body molecules every second.
The variation-and-selection process employed by the
adaptive component of the immune system enables the
organism to adapt rapidly to diseases that have evaded
the innate component of the immune system. In this
sense, it is impressively domain general. Yet, not only
does the adaptive component rely upon the innate com-
ponent, it too is elaborately innate. One hundred million
antibodies occur not by a happy accident but by an orche-
strated process creating combinations of genes from highly
polymorphic regions of the chromosomes. Other geneti-
cally evolved processes are required for the antibodies
that bind to antigens to signal the innate component of
the immune system, for the B-cells producing the anti-
bodies to reproduce and ramp up production, to keep the
antibody circulating after elimination of the disease organ-
ism, and so on. The “machine”part of this Darwin machine
is very complex indeed!
Against this background, we can begin to identify the
valid and invalid elements of both EP and the SSSM in
their polarized forms. The massive modularity thesis of
Tooby and Cosmides is like a description of the innate com-
ponent of the immune system without the adaptive com-
ponent. On the other hand, Skinner’s effort to explain as
much as possible in terms of operant conditioning is like
a description of the adaptive component of the immune
system without the innate component. Combining the
valid elements of both positions enables us to reconcile
the concepts of elaborate innateness and an open-ended
capacity for change.
The immune system offers an additional insight into the
distinctively human capacity for behavioral and cultural
change: It is inherently a multi-agent cooperative system.
Dozens of specialized cell types coordinate their activities
through a chemical signaling system to achieve the
common goal of protecting the organism. Individuals with
immune systems that failed to exhibit teamwork were not
among our ancestors.
The capacity for open-ended learning at the individual
level occurs in many species, as Skinner showed for
pigeons and rats. The capacity for cultural transmission
also exists in many species –more than one might
imagine; it is a relatively new topic in animal behavior
research (Hill 2010; Laland & Galef 2009; Laland &
Wilson et al.: Evolving the future: Toward a science of intentional change
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2014) 37:4 399