CEN Colloquium: Ivan Kroupin, From village to metropolis: Predictable and pervasive changes to visual and cognitive environments as a function of general evolutionary pressures

In this talk I will give an overview of an emerging theoretical framework which aims to use general evolutionary pressures to describe the general, historical trajectory of cultural evolution from small-scale, naturally-situated societies ("village") to large-scale, urban, industrialized systems ("metropolis"). Specifically, I will focus on the way that increasing layered modularization of processes can explain the reliable change in physical, visual environments humans create and live in — towards greater visual standardization and within-kind simplicity of individual forms, while at the same time radically increasing diversity across kinds. I will propose that this framework can help explain the striking differences in respone to visual illusions by urban, semi-urban and wholly rural, small-scale societies my colleagues and I have found in recent work.

Bio: Ivan Kroupin is a post-doc in the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, working in the Comparative Cultural Psychology group. He also holds affiliations at the London School of Economics and Harvard university, where he completed his previous post-docs and PhD — and is co-director of a permanent fieldsite in the Kunene region of Namibia and Angola.

Join in person at the MPIB or remotely via WebEx: https://mpib-berlin.webex.com/mpib-berlin/j.php?MTID=maff3dee0ad54cb921191ff33d0b92347

Meeting number: 2744 645 6180

Password: ArpQMePJ352