The dissemination of divination in roman republican times

(Henrich & Boyd 2002: 110). Such models already exist and have been applied to the study
of culture (Boyd & Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza & Feldman 1981). These works were
originally dismissed by Sperber because they assumed a simplified view of the mind (Sperber
1996). It has however turned out that this need not be the case (Henrich & Boyd 2002) and
Sperber seems to admit the appropriateness of these models although he disagrees with some
of the details (Cladière & Sperber 2007).
I will follow the cultural epidemiology approach because it is already integrated with the
cognitive science of religion and because with a few adjustments it is very suitable to solve
the problem at hand. These adjustments are, first we need to shift our emphasis to risk factors
and multi-factorial explanations if we want to use the cultural epidemiology in actual
investigations of the dissemination of cultural entities. Second, we have to reintegrate other
factors aside from the cognitive ones in explaining the success of certain cultural entities
compared to others. In particular I would emphasize what others have called “contextual” or
“environmental” factors in cultural transmission. For example evolutionary anthropologists
Joseph Henrich and Richard McElrath argue that there are two overall types of biases in
cultural transmission: a content bias and a context bias (Henrich & McElreath 2003: 129).
The content bias captures what Sperber, Boyer and others have identified as the cognitive
bias. This is a universal bias. For example, as shown in chapter 4, we found a content bias in
divination in the bias towards representing intentionality, the HIDD. The context bias covers
what Sperber called “local cultural context” and is dependent on local factors. There are two
sub categories of cultural biases: model based biases and frequency dependent biases. The
most relevant model based bias for our purposes is the prestige bias mentioned above. We
also found a frequency dependent bias in oblative divination in the importance of reiteration
of cultural models specifying the ability of a counterintuitive agent to communicate with
humans.
Third, we cannot hope to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the dissemination of
divination. We need to look at factors that promote the cultural entities under consideration,
be they beliefs, folk tales, artifacts, house building or, indeed, divination. These factors are
probabilistic and therefore not necessary and sufficient.
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