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Introduction

HANNAH CHAPELLE WOJCIEHOWSKI, VITTORIO GALLESE

In the western philosophical tradition, nature and culture have gen-
erally been thought of as two terms of a binary opposition. This op-
position was considered so fundamental and so obvious that it need-
ed relatively li le explaining — well, maybe a li le. Depending on
the story that one wished to tell, nature could function as the domi-
nant of the two terms. By appealing to nature — generally, to human
nature — one could explain or defend any number of propositions,
whether moral, economic, psychological, sexual, etc. Culture, when
viewed as the subdominant term, functioned as a kind of overlay to
nature. Hence, culture could be perceived as extraneous to nature,
which in that narrative was construed as prior to culture, and hence
more fundamental and salient to whatever questions one sought to
answer.
It was also possible, however, to tell a different story by posi-
tioning culture as the dominant term of the binary. According to that
narrative, culture improves upon, advances, or supersedes nature. Na-
ture can thus be devalued as primitive, less evolved, animal, feminine,
inchoate, or otherwise undeveloped. Nature can be split off from cul-
ture, and ultimately excised from our view of ourselves as humans in
relation to the rest of the world, against which, as possessors of cul-
ture, we stand in opposition.
The concept of the biocultural complicates these standard di-
chotomous accounts of the world, and specifically of the human
mind, without fully eliminating the binary opposition described
above. It does so by envisioning the cultural as an extension or out-
growth of the natural — i.e., as an evolved capacity of humans to de-
velop and use instrumental intelligence. This was a case made by an-

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