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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2022
We argue that music can serve as a time-sensitive lens into the interplay between instrumental and ritual stances in cultural evolution. Over various timescales, music can switch between pursuing an end goal or not, and between presenting a causal opacity that is resolvable, or not. With these fluctuations come changes in the motivational structures that drive innovation versus copying.
Target article
Tradition and invention: The bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution
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Author response
Bifocal stance theory: An effort to broaden, extend, and clarify