That complex whole

Lee Cronk's book asks how human behavior can be studied through both evolution and culture at the same time. Its scholarly inquiries include how to define culture, whether other species have it, which human traits are universal and which vary, how culture shapes behavior, and whether moral and cultural relativism hold up.

The book surveys current models of how cultural change and biological evolution relate. It examines the idea of the meme and the emerging field of memetics, and it presents the author's own research on culture's role in human communication, drawing on the study of animal signals.