Cultural evolution, design and philosophy: For the change of Era

Abstract

Human culture is the accumulation and evolution of results produced by countless design exercises. However, the process from which such design emerges lacks a solid scientific theory. Long-term sustainability issues and obsolete designs that stemmed from the Modern Era force to discover new boundaries and innovative design possibilities. This analysis starts by making reference to life's biological laws and the biophysical boundaries to which all living beings are constrained in order to propose a model that links restriction and capacity to four evolutionary strategies (Status Quo, Survival, Transformation, Growth). The latter is related to cultural evolution, which identifies human culture as a phenomenon that stays within life's general evolution. The proposed model links evolutionary strategies to the design goals chosen by people and to the fundamental philosophical blocks that are consistent with each option presented by the model. At the end a new possibility is identified for moving forward into a transformational future supported by social technologies of metabolic design which can avoid change towards an authoritarian post-modernity. © 2011 WIT Press.