Table Of ContentModernity and
Cultural Decline
A Biobehavioral Perspective
Matthew Alexandar Sarraf
Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie
Colin Feltham
Modernity and Cultural Decline
“Modernity and Cultural Decline is a breathtaking scientific analysis of the rise—
and now the decline—of Western civilization. The authors’ use of bio-genetics is
unique and profound. Spengler and Toynbee would have been interested. We also
should be interested—and forewarned.”
—Seymour Itzkoff, Professor Emeritus of Education, Smith College, USA
“The authors advance a bold thesis to explain the decline of the West … in terms
of evolutionary processes. They discuss cutting-edge evolutionary theories of
human sociality … The authors explain the ‘social epistasis amplification model’
and the role of spiteful mutations. … The book puts human nature, genes and
evolution back into historiography and sociology, from where those concepts have
been largely expelled since the mid-twentieth century. The final chapter advances
… cosmological reasoning by providing a far-futures vision of the possible course
of human space-colonization … This is the real thing, sharp minds … offering
testable hypotheses based on quantitative models. As I read Modernity and
Cultural Decline it occurred to me that … many university departments deserve to
be … restocked with genuine scientists.”
—Frank Salter, Former Researcher of the Max Planck Society, Germany
“A profoundly important book. The authors have that rarest of combinations:
vision and courage. This, combined with a vast technical knowledge, makes for a
potent force. To tackle the evolutionary-genetic basis for the problems of Western
civilization, in light of industrial technology, seems obvious, and yet they are the
first to do so. And even if their highly pessimistic conclusion pans out, there is still
much value in understanding our road to collapse. One can only hope that society
finds the will to engage with these vital and consequential ideas.”
—David Skrbina, Senior Lecturer, University of Michigan, Dearborn, USA
“Modernity and Cultural Decline is a supremely bold, thoroughgoing biological
account of often unacknowledged double-edged or negative impacts of modernity
… [such as] rising psychopathology, nihilistic outlook and social incohesion. The
actual plusses and minuses of life in the modern era are teased out in a profound
chapter clearing away the political and philosophical lenses through which com-
monly modernity is viewed. Socio-cultural phenomena—the puzzle of the demo-
graphic transition as well as industrialization—no less than psychology and
morphology are here shown to be highly amenable to study in terms of genetics
and evolution…
In unusual depth of argumentation with voluminous evidence, there is no
flinching at the great complexity of the data, which is treated forensically. Criticism
in particular is dealt with comprehensively.
The gauntlet is thrown down with … near exhaustive detail, providing food for
thought, irrespective of how near the mark the authors—or in agreement the
reader—may be. This is the sort of science book of which we need more: highly
innovative and expansive to the point of seeming blue-sky-thinking that neverthe-
less is grounded.”
—Steve Moxon, Independent Researcher,
Author of Sex Difference Explained (2016)
Matthew Alexandar Sarraf
Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie
Colin Feltham
Modernity and
Cultural Decline
A Biobehavioral
Perspective
Matthew Alexandar Sarraf Michael Anthony Woodley of Menie
Amherst, MA, USA Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Ixelles, Belgium
Colin Feltham
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-32983-9 ISBN 978-3-030-32984-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32984-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2019
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M.A.S.: To the memory of my grandparents
M.A.W.o.M.: To the memory of Professor Henry Cosad Harpending
A
cknowledgments
Gerhard Meisenberg generously provided comments on the entire manu-
script, which improved it substantially. Steve Moxon and David Skrbina
gave helpful feedback as well. Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre and Heitor
Barcellos Ferreira Fernandes offered critically important assistance with
statistical analyses presented in Chap. 7. Discussions with Aurelio José
Figueredo and Bruce Charlton helped the development of several ideas
and arguments in this book. The authors alone are responsible for any
shortcomings that remain.
vii
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 Defending Biobehavioral Science 23
3 Medieval and Modern Worlds 75
4 Discontent with Modernity 101
5 Enlightenment Never 129
6 Making the Case for Mutation Accumulation 197
7 The Social Epistasis Amplification Model: A Diachronic
Test and Expansion of Theoretical Foundations 229
8 Biocosmic Pessimism 273
Index 299
ix
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 2.1 The black dots track the usage frequencies of terms associated
with “binding” moral foundations, whereas the gray dots track
the usage frequencies of terms associated with “individualizing”
moral foundations using Google Ngram Viewer data. The
correlation (r) between the two trends is −0.828 (p<0.05;
N = 10) 26
Fig. 6.1 The decadal change in mutation load (estimated relative to the
1695 reference cohort) under increasing I (0.35 to 0.99, black
bs
points) and fixed I (0.35, gray points), 1695 to 2015 209
bs
Fig. 6.2 The association between the decadal change in mutation load
and the Icelandic decadal mean temperature anomaly, lagged by
one generation, 1805 to 2005 210
Fig. 7.1 The unit-weighted chronometric factors of prior negative
selection (PNS; lagged by 25 years), developmental instability
(DI), social epistasis (SE), and global fitness (GF) 244
Fig. 7.2 The SEQCA for the first hypothesis, with each step in the
cascade controlled for the natural log of time 245
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
ThreaTs To The FuTure
The essential message of this book is that Western populations are in decline,
by which we mean that they are changing in a number of significant ways
that are reasonably considered to be undesirable. Although this deteriora-
tion is manifest most clearly at the sociocultural level, we argue that its
ultimate basis is in human biological evolution. Modern Western people
have been losing a number of important traits, including intelligence and
what might be called “existential vigor,” understood as an individual’s
robust psychological commitment to his culture-bound way of life. This is
apparent across a host of indicators of mental and physical health, intellectual
productivity and ability, social cohesion, and perceived meaning in life. As
they seem to comprise the foundation of advanced civilizations, the loss of
these traits may prove catastrophic in the long run. The deepening of social
isolation (declines in family formation alongside high rates of family dissolu-
tion; solitary living; preference for short- over long-term relationships), pro-
fane and narcissistic culture (secularization and rejection of all forms of
transcendence, especially those encouraging sacrifice for anything other than
individual hedonistic gain1), and ideological/sub-cultural fragmentation
1 Some have argued that recent Western history, sometimes meaning modernity (which can
denote different time periods, but in this context most often means the period from indus-
trialization on) and sometimes the contemporary period more narrowly, has not been an
“age of disenchantment,” but rather that in this era, transcendent meaning has been sus-
tained through or is being revived by “New Age” and other forms of basically paganistic
© The Author(s) 2019 1
M. A. Sarraf et al., Modernity and Cultural Decline,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32984-6_1
