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Papers by Patrik Lindenfors

Biosemiotics. Journal/Biosemiotics, May 29, 2024

Human evolution and the evolution of cultural capacity are discussed. The process of cultural evo... more Human evolution and the evolution of cultural capacity are discussed. The process of cultural evolution is described. Cultural evolutionary explanations of the “problematic” parts of human cooperation are outlined. Current (and somewhat disputed) knowledge around how humans can be seen as nodes of a network and how traits spread in such networks are presented. Memetic selection is discussed.

Skeptic (Altadena, CA), Sep 22, 2017

Springer eBooks, 2017

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Social Science Research Network, 2018

Sometimes the normal course of events is disrupted by a particularly swift and profound change. H... more Sometimes the normal course of events is disrupted by a particularly swift and profound change. Historians have often referred to such changes as "revolutions" and, though they have identified many of them, they have rarely supported their claims with statistical evidence. Here we present a method to identify revolutions based on a measure of the multivariate rate of change called Foote Novelty. We define revolutions as those periods of time when the value of this measure, F , can, by a non-parametric test, be shown to be significantly greater than the background rate. Our method also identifies conservative periods when the rate of change is unusually low. Importantly, our method permits searching for revolutions over any time scale that the data permit. We apply it to several quantitative data sets that capture long-term political, social and cultural changes and, in some of them, identify revolutions, both well known and not. Our method is a general one that can be applied to any phenomenon captured by multivariate time series data of sufficient quality.

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Sep 5, 2018

Social evolution concerns questions of sociality and its causes. Central issues include why indiv... more Social evolution concerns questions of sociality and its causes. Central issues include why individuals in some species live in large groups while others live alone, why group composition varies, who moves between groups, and to what degree group living either is just loose association with other individuals or involves complex social interactions. Basic social organization can be described by specifying size, sexual composition, and fission/fusion dynamics of social units. Males and females either live alone or together, in this way yielding five basic potential types of social unit: solitary, monogamous, unimale-multifemale, unifemale-multimale, and multimale-multifemale. Note that social systems are distinct from mating systems, which instead describe general mating practices of individuals, often but not necessarily aligned with how individuals socialize. Primates display a magnificent variety of types of social organization, ranging from nocturnal and solitary lorises and tarsiers in the tropical forests of Africa and Asia, through pair-bonding gibbons, sakis, and titis, through group-living baboons, macaques, and vervet monkeys, culminating numerically in the nightly reaggregating sleeping herds of gelada baboons in Ethiopia, which consist of many independent stable reproductive units containing one or several individuals of each sex. In contrast to most other mammals, the majority of primate species have social groups composed of both males and females. Note that social primates do not just live in loose associations of independent individuals; instead, each individual is a member of an intricate network of socially interacting individuals that uses various strategies for survival and reproduction. Social relationships with other members of these social units involve kinship, dominance, and short-and long-term coalitions, where each individual has a specific role depending on who is being interacted with and where these roles change over the life cycle. Even solitary primates, though foraging alone, have social interactions with their neighbors and differing degrees of overlapping ranges. In some "solitary" nocturnal species, individuals spend the day together in sleeping groups, and males and females sometimes defend a territory together (Kappeler and Van Schaik 2002). Phylogenetic analyses indicate a single initial shift from an ancestral solitary lifestyle to a multimale-multifemale type of sociality in the anthropoid ancestral line, sometime after anthropoid primates split from strepsirhines and tarsiers. Most strepsirhines and tarsiers have remained nocturnal and solitary, the main exception being the lemurs of Madagascar, where another shift to sociality has resulted in many species being diurnal The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.

Ecological Economics, Mar 1, 2001

Political Science Research and Methods

This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on th... more This paper introduces a new approach to the quantitative study of democratization. Building on the comparative case-study and large-N literature, it outlines an episode approach that identifies the discrete beginning of a period of political liberalization, traces its progression, and classifies episodes as successful versus different types of failing outcomes, thus avoiding potentially fallacious assumptions of unit homogeneity. We provide a description and analysis of all 383 liberalization episodes from 1900 to 2019, offering new insights on democratic “waves”. We also demonstrate the value of this approach by showing that while several established covariates are valuable for predicting the ultimate outcomes, none explain the onset of a period of liberalization.

Pave Franciskus har inte genomfort en enda substantiell forandring av kyrkan – laran ar fortfaran... more Pave Franciskus har inte genomfort en enda substantiell forandring av kyrkan – laran ar fortfarande patriarkal, homofobisk och odemokratisk. Humanisternas lagger i dag fram tio teser for en mer hum ...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2020

conducted most of the data analysis and made substantial contributions to the written text. Vanes... more conducted most of the data analysis and made substantial contributions to the written text. Vanessa Boese and Seraphine F. Maerz took lead on drafting of the text, and assisted with the data analysis and interpretation. Patrik Lindenfors developed the domination analysis methodology and contributed substantially to the data analysis process. Staffan I. Lindberg made contributions to the conception and design of the paper, as well as engaging in revisions of the written text. This research project was supported by Knut and