The DemystifySci Podcast Evolution Without Genes - Dr. Liane Gabora (Part 1), DemystifySci #390
Jan 4, 2026
In this engaging discussion, Dr. Liane Gabora, a cognitive scientist and professor, explores the intriguing concept of culture as its own evolutionary process. She introduces autocatalytic networks, showing how self-organizing minds contribute to cultural evolution. Through her research, she reveals how language, memory, and creativity emerge via inner shifts in thought. Dr. Gabora argues that cultural transmission fundamentally differs from genetic inheritance, emphasizing the unique role of minds in shaping culture over time.
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Autocatalysis As Precursor To Life
- Autocatalytic networks can explain how life self-organized before Darwinian evolution emerged.
- Liane Gabora argues these networks become self-maintaining webs that allow sloppy replication and cooperative change.
Modeling Cumulative Cultural Evolution
- Liane recounts her early artificial-life work modeling agents that invent or imitate actions to produce cumulative cultural evolution.
- Her model showed diversity rises then falls as agents converge on fitter actions via invention and imitation.
Autopoiesis Versus Autocatalysis
- Gabora contrasts autocatalysis with autopoiesis and notes the latter's origin with Maturana and Varela.
- She highlights that autocatalytic network theory has been formalized mathematically beyond descriptive autopoiesis.
