P. Turchin, H. Whitehouse, Pieter François, Jennifer Larson, A. Covey
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Chronologically the first paper in the sequence, “Testing the Big Gods hypothesis with global historical data: a review and ‘retake’” (Whitehouse et al., 2023), is a revised and improved version of a Letter originally published in Nature showing that moralizing gods did not drive the evolution of socio-political complexity as proposed by the Big Gods hypothesis (Whitehouse et al., 2019). The paper was retracted due to errors in the coding and analysis of missing data, even though the errors were correctable and did not significantly change the paper’s headline findings (Whitehouse et al., 2021). The creation of a ‘Retake’ format at Religion, Brain & Behavior (Bulbulia et al., 2021) provided a suitable platform for the corrected analysis to be published and, further, to undertake a major reanalysis using additional data based on improved methods of data management and statistical analysis. Overall, this Retake provides further support for the original Nature paper, confirming that the largest increases in sociopolitical complexity did indeed precede the earliest documented appearance of Big Gods in world history and showing that Big Gods did not contribute to the evolution of sociopolitical complexity as predicted by the Big Gods hypothesis. The Retake is followed by a Target Article (Turchin et al., 2023), showing that the intensity of warfare and agriculture were major drivers in the evolution of both socio-political complexity and moralizing religion. The correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion, thus, resulted from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables. These conclusions resulted from a major advance on the methods of the Nature paper and Retake, most notably by going beyond the typical binary measures previously used to capture the presence or absence of moralizing religion and replacing these with a series of graduated measures of ‘moralizing supernatural punishment’ enabling researchers to quantify the variables of interest. This approach also allowed the Seshat team to estimate the contributions of a series of other variables, in addition to socio-political complexity, in driving the evolution of moralizing religion. The other variables included warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity. The Target Article is then followed by a series of commentaries addressing issues of theory, data, and analysis. The main theoretical question at stake in the ensuing discussions concerns whether more elaborated measures of moralizing religion might have produced different arguments. 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引用次数: 0
摘要
在这期《宗教、大脑与行为》的特刊中,Seshat团队展示了十多年来数据库建设的分析结果,重点是建立宗教道德化在社会政治复杂性演变中的作用。这期特刊包含两篇研究文章,报告了210页详细的分析叙述和219页解释Seshat团队基于这些叙述的编码决策的表格所支持的数据的广泛统计分析结果。按时间顺序,该序列中的第一篇论文“用全球历史数据测试大神假说:回顾和“重新夺回””(Whitehouse等人,2023年)是对最初发表在《自然》杂志上的一封信的修订和改进版本,该信件表明,道德化的神并没有像大神假说所提出的那样推动社会政治复杂性的演变(Whitehouse等人,2019年)。由于编码和缺失数据分析中的错误,论文被撤回,尽管这些错误是可以纠正的,并且没有显著改变论文的标题发现(Whitehouse et al., 2021)。在《宗教、大脑与行为》(Bulbulia等人,2021年)中创建的“重做”格式为发表更正后的分析提供了一个合适的平台,此外,还可以根据改进的数据管理和统计分析方法,使用额外的数据进行重大的重新分析。总的来说,这篇论文进一步支持了《自然》杂志的原始论文,证实了社会政治复杂性的最大增长确实早于世界历史上最早有记载的大神的出现,并表明大神并没有像大神假说所预测的那样促进社会政治复杂性的进化。Retake之后是一篇目标文章(Turchin et al., 2023),表明战争和农业的强度是社会政治复杂性和道德宗教演变的主要驱动因素。因此,社会复杂性与宗教道德化之间的相关性源于共同的进化驱动因素,而不是这两个变量之间的直接因果关系。这些结论来自于《自然》论文和Retake方法的重大进步,最值得注意的是,超越了以前用于捕捉道德化宗教存在与否的典型二元衡量标准,代之以一系列“道德化超自然惩罚”的逐步衡量标准,使研究人员能够量化感兴趣的变量。这种方法也使Seshat团队能够估计一系列其他变量的贡献,除了社会政治复杂性,在推动道德宗教的演变中。其他变量包括战争、畜牧业和农业生产力。目标文章之后是一系列关于理论、数据和分析问题的评论。在随后的讨论中,主要的理论问题是,更详细的宗教道德化措施是否会产生不同的论点。这种以文章加评论的形式进行的辩论,使许多具有经验和统计重要性的问题得以突出和讨论,使分歧点得以尖锐,并探索解决办法。综上所述,本期特刊的研究结果表明,宗教道德化并没有推动社会政治复杂性的进化,也不存在反向因果循环(复杂性)
Introducing a special issue on the role of moralizing gods in the evolution of socio-political complexity
In this special issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior, the Seshat team presents the analysis results from more than a decade of database construction focused on establishing the role of moralizing religion in the evolution of socio-political complexity. The special issue contains two research articles reporting the results of extensive statistical analysis of data supported by 210 pages of detailed Analytical Narratives and 219 pages of tables explaining the Seshat team’s coding decisions based on these narratives. Chronologically the first paper in the sequence, “Testing the Big Gods hypothesis with global historical data: a review and ‘retake’” (Whitehouse et al., 2023), is a revised and improved version of a Letter originally published in Nature showing that moralizing gods did not drive the evolution of socio-political complexity as proposed by the Big Gods hypothesis (Whitehouse et al., 2019). The paper was retracted due to errors in the coding and analysis of missing data, even though the errors were correctable and did not significantly change the paper’s headline findings (Whitehouse et al., 2021). The creation of a ‘Retake’ format at Religion, Brain & Behavior (Bulbulia et al., 2021) provided a suitable platform for the corrected analysis to be published and, further, to undertake a major reanalysis using additional data based on improved methods of data management and statistical analysis. Overall, this Retake provides further support for the original Nature paper, confirming that the largest increases in sociopolitical complexity did indeed precede the earliest documented appearance of Big Gods in world history and showing that Big Gods did not contribute to the evolution of sociopolitical complexity as predicted by the Big Gods hypothesis. The Retake is followed by a Target Article (Turchin et al., 2023), showing that the intensity of warfare and agriculture were major drivers in the evolution of both socio-political complexity and moralizing religion. The correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion, thus, resulted from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables. These conclusions resulted from a major advance on the methods of the Nature paper and Retake, most notably by going beyond the typical binary measures previously used to capture the presence or absence of moralizing religion and replacing these with a series of graduated measures of ‘moralizing supernatural punishment’ enabling researchers to quantify the variables of interest. This approach also allowed the Seshat team to estimate the contributions of a series of other variables, in addition to socio-political complexity, in driving the evolution of moralizing religion. The other variables included warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity. The Target Article is then followed by a series of commentaries addressing issues of theory, data, and analysis. The main theoretical question at stake in the ensuing discussions concerns whether more elaborated measures of moralizing religion might have produced different arguments. This debate, afforded by the article-plus-commentaries format, allowed many issues of empirical and statistical importance to be brought to the fore and discussed, allowing points of disagreement to be sharpened and solutions to be explored. Taken together, the findings established by this special issue are that moralizing religion did not drive the evolution of socio-political complexity, nor was there a reverse causality loop (complexity