| Sumario: | A commentary on D. Sperber's “Anthropology and psychology: towards an epidemiology of representations,” which appeared in Man, vol. 20, 1985, pp. 73-89. Sperber argued that humans are susceptible to certain representations and not others due to genetically specified mental devices and that this helps to explain the global recurrence of certain cultural concepts. He further argued that other representations to which humans have no innate susceptibility can become common for sociological reasons. The writer critiques Sperber's approach to the “transmittability” of representations, rejecting the idea of genetic programming, and based on recent research in neurology and artificial intelligence, he argues that all mental processes are socially constructed. Using a synthesis of recent anthropological, psychological, and neuroscientific theories, the writer argues for an integrated cross-disciplinary theory of cultural transmission.
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