Editing Stephen Jay Gould (section)

===Cultural evolution===
{{See also|Cultural evolution|Lamarckism|Memetics|Sociocultural evolution}}

Gould's arguments against progress in evolutionary biology did not extend towards a notion of progress in general or notions of [[cultural evolution]]. In ''[[Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin|Full House]]'', Gould compares two notions of progress against one another. While the first concept of progress, evolutionary progress, is argued to be invalid for a number of biological considerations, Gould permits that evolution may operate in human cultural evolution through a [[Lamarckism#In sociocultural evolution|Lamarckian]] mechanism. Gould goes on to argue that the disappearance of the 0.400 [[batting average (baseball)|batting average]] in baseball is paradoxically due to the inclusion of better players in the league, rather than players becoming worse over time. In his view such a process is likely reflective in a number of cultural phenomena including sports, the visual arts, and music where, unlike in biological systems, the realm of aesthetic possibilities is constrained by a "right wall" of human limits and aesthetic preferences.<ref>{{cite interview |last=Gould |first=Jay |interviewer=[[Michael Krasny (talk show host)|Michael Krasny]] |title=Stephen Jay Gould |work=[[Mother Jones (magazine)|Mother Jones]] |publisher=Mother Jones Magazine |location=San Francisco |date=January 1997}}</ref> Gould later goes on to state that his arguments for biological evolution should not be applied to cultural change lest they be employed by, "so-called 'political correctness' as a doctrine that celebrates all indigenous practice, and therefore permits no distinctions, judgements, or analyses."<ref name=FullHouse/>