Reply to Steven Pinker

Human progress isn't just a matter of reason, institution building, or moral commitment

Steven Pinker, 2024 (Wikicommons - Gage Skidmore)

This is my reply to a recent post by Steven Pinker in Aporia Magazine.

Steven Pinker’s “human progress” has really been progress by a relatively small population, essentially Western Europeans over the past millennium. Their trajectory of cultural evolution has been both cause and effect of a trajectory of genetic evolution that is now being reconstructed from ancient DNA.

Steven Pinker argues that we humans have advanced by refining our capacity for reason, by building institutions that incentivize the struggle for truth, and by becoming morally committed toward "human flourishing as the ultimate good (rather than religious dogma, national glory, and other distractions)."

First, let's be precise in our language. By "humans," we don’t mean all humans or even a majority of them. We mean Western Europeans and a trajectory of cultural evolution that began among them and spread to the rest of the world. This spread was not a passive diffusion of Great Ideas. Western Europeans literally took over the world and still dominate it economically and politically.

Second, we now have good evidence that this trajectory of cultural evolution acted as a template for genetic evolution. Humans adapt to their cultural environment just as they adapt to their natural environment. More so, in fact. This is why genetic evolution sped up more than a 100-fold some 10,000 years ago. By that time, our ancestors had spread into every natural environment from the Equator to the Arctic, and they were now entering an ever-wider range of cultural environments. Culture decided who among them would live and reproduce. We humans had created culture, and culture was now recreating us ... through natural selection.

This gene-culture evolution can be seen in ancient DNA, particularly in alleles associated with cognitive ability. Over the past 10,000 years, mean cognitive ability has increased — but not at an even rate. Cognitive evolution has proceeded in fits and starts, and at different rates in different populations. It has happened through humans pushing the bounds of their phenotypic envelope and thereby creating new environments with new cognitive demands. Cultural evolution and genetic evolution have thus been advancing in tandem.

Or regressing in tandem. When we look at ancient DNA, we see not only advances but also retreats. There have been two cognitive retreats in human history. The first one happened during the Imperial Era of Rome, when fertility collapsed among the elites. The second one began around the turn of the 20th century and is still ongoing.

I won't bore you with more details. Suffice it to say that progress has not been confined to the realms of culture, ideas, and politics. It has also affected flesh-and-blood humans.

References

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Cochran, G. & Harpending, H. (2009). The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. Basic Books: New York. https://www.amazon.ca/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465020429

Frost, P. (2022a). When did Europe pull ahead? And why? Peter Frost’s Newsletter, November 21. https://www.anthro1.net/p/when-did-europe-pull-ahead-and-why

Frost, P. (2022b). Europeans and recent cognitive evolution. Peter Frost’s Newsletter, December 12. https://www.anthro1.net/p/europeans-and-recent-cognitive-evolution

Frost, P. (2023). 1. Genetic pacification in Western Europe from late medieval to early modern times. My wish list for research in 2024. Peter Frost’s Newsletter, December 19. https://www.anthro1.net/p/1-genetic-pacification-in-western

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Frost, P. (2024b). How Christianity rebooted cognitive evolution. Peter Frost’s Newsletter, November 13.

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Piffer, D., & Kirkegaard, E.O.W. (2024). Evolutionary Trends of Polygenic Scores in European Populations from the Paleolithic to Modern Times. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 27(1), 30-49. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2024.8

Pinker, S. (2025). Steven Pinker replies to our article on progress and meaning. Aporia Magazine, January 8.

Rinaldi, A. (2017). We're on a road to nowhere. Culture and adaptation to the environment are driving human evolution, but the destination of this journey is unpredictable. EMBO reports, 18, 2094-2100. https://doi.org/10.15252/embr.201745399