There is no doubt that a new evolution has appeared, following the first one (the Universe giving way to complex physics and chemistry in some parts of each galaxy) and the second one (DNA-based life on Earth). This Third Evolution is linked to Mankind, but clearly, human beings are part of the DNA-based life too, and the Universe for that matter.
So what is it? We'll try to make sense into what is happening now in front of us.
Some scientists have talked about cultural evolution, as the new evolution. Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (Cultural transmission and Evolution: a Quantitative Approach,1981) insist on the need to find the ways culture gets transmitted: parents to children, friends to friends, institutions to individuals. But this notion is rather narrow and depends on different populations on Earth. The cultural evolution lacks universality.
There has been the meme paradigm (The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore 1999). But this theory failed to provide a universal model of a meme.
We think that it is time to go beyond these theories and see that the Third Evolution is using Mankind but is not centred on it. In the same way as the Second Evolution is using genes but is not centred on genes.
We'll develop that idea in the coming posts.
