COMMENT ON “GROUP SELECTION AND METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM: COMPATIBLE AND COMPLEMENTARY” BY DOUGLAS GLEN WHITMAN

My compliments to Glen Whitman on a carefully argued paper that makes an important point: methodological individualism is not what you think it is; and, contrary to what many have argued, methodological individualism is not in conflict with the notion of group selection in the theory of cultural evolution. Of course, part of the reason I like Whitman’s paper so much is that, as some of his footnotes hint, I have been saying many of the same things for a long time¹ (Langlois, 1983, 1985, 1986).