The Heresy of Oedipus and the Mind/Mind Split: A Study of the Biocultural Origins of Civilization

The nature/nurture controversy, sometimes known as the evolution/environment controversy, seems to have trickled down into the information systems of the vernacular world as an unfortunate rift between duelling scholarly camps. The Biocultural Paradigm is offered as a model that transcends both camps, by recognizing the neuro-biological origins of human development and by delineating exactly how and when sociological influences can and cannot affect those neuro-biological invariants. The Biocultural Paradigm is established by using existing discoveries in evolutionary neuro-biology and Selection Theory. It is composed of five proto-cultural models ("biocultures") which correspond to the five evolutionary centres of our neurological structures. Each bioculture then is formed by the cultural manifestation of the primacy of certain neurological traits over others, eventually (through the habitual repetition of the primacy of certain neurological links at the expense of others), these individual traits become societal ones; thus forming the socio-biological basis for the Biocultural Paradigm. The sociological evidence is founded primarily upon sociolinguistic grounds, by analyzing the relationships between the literary remnants of certain cultures and their corresponding social, political, and religious structures. The literary evidence is examined as it elucidates a neural map of cortical activity (thereby offering clues as to the biocultural slant of the group), while the social, political, and religious systems are examined for evidence of neurological predispositions that manifest externally as cultural substitution systems.