Culture, Biology, and Human Uniqueness

Culture in its various dimensions is perhaps the single most important development in human evolution, and it lies at the root of what makes human beings unique. Culture mediates our relationships with other people, with the environment, with spirits and deities, and with abstract or imagined worlds like mathematics and the future. Culture provides the context for language, without which our ability to think would be grossly constrained (however often we find ourselves at a loss for words), and it makes possible our endlessly diverse modes of social cooperation and conflict. Culture encompasses much of what makes us distinctively human.

Examining socially learned patterns of behavior (as culture can be defined) presents an especially promising approach to questions of human uniqueness at the present moment. Exciting recent research has demonstrated that various other animals live in part by cultural traditions that vary from group to group within a species, and studies related to claims of human uniqueness are now prominent in many fields—though, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, researchers rarely manage to see the whole human being.

The Foundation’s 2010 Funding Priority on “Culture, Biology, and Human Uniqueness” aims to spark ambitious interdisciplinary research in biology, ethology, economics, law, political science, psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Proposals are invited in response to one or more of the following Big Questions:

1. 1How can the study of human and animal culture help us to better understand human distinctiveness?
2. 2Can the advent of culture help to explain altruism, purposeful activity, and moral reasoning—capacities that some see as genetic adaptations?
3. 3 What roles have been played by human agency and culture in drawing out the latent potential of human uniqueness?

Budget range and term for individual projects: From $50,000 to $200,000 and for up two years.