Education as Cultural Inheritance 100 Volume 78 Issue 1 PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION | susan VerduccI sandford, editor © 2022 Philosophy of Education Society Education as Cultural Inheritance: Using Oakeshott and Dewey to Explore the Educational Implications of Recent Advances in Evolutionary Science Aline Nardo University of Edinburgh A new evolutionary paradigm known as “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” (EES) is challenging current mainstream evolutionary science grounded in the so-called “Modern Synthesis” (MS). MS’s lineage dates back to Darwin and was feshed out into its current paradigmatic form in the early twentieth century when Darwinism was reconciled with Mendelian genetics. 1 The traditional gene-centred evolutionary model of MS has many critics, including developmental biologists and ecologists, who suggest the paradigm fails to account for how genetic information manifests in the phenotype and the role of non-genetic processes therein. Among the critics of MS is EES, which is a developing inter- national research program representing a concerted effort to expand MS. 2 One of EES’ main concerns, which I focus on in this essay, is to pluralize MS’ understanding of inheritance. 3 In the traditional MS model of evolution, inheritance is limited to describing the cross-generational transmission of genes. EES, in contrast, highlights the underestimated yet crucial role of “soft” inheritance in evolution, including “learning and cultural transmission” as forms of non-genetic inheritance. 4 Therein, EES provides scientifc grounding for the idea that education, learning, and teaching play decisive roles in human evolution. Importantly, in contrast to well-established accounts of the infu- ence of learning in evolution, thinkers of EES are not viewing learning and cultural transmission as a part of a separate secondary inheritance