On memes
The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in Chapter 11 of his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, to describe what he calls the unit of cultural evolution, by analogy to the gene, which is, according to him, the unit of biological evolution. The most detailed, thoughtful and coherent account of memetics in the literature is probably Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine, in which the theory of the meme is given its “best shot” according to Dawkins himself.
Memes are ideas that behave as selfish replicators in the sense that they are transmitted from brain to brain through communication and immitation, and they multiply and spread, not unlike viruses. They are in competition with each other for limited brain-space, and some of them are more successful at replicating themselves than others due to being well adapted to certain features of human nature or society. An example used by Susan Blackmore is the meme corresponding to a certain type of soup. The idea of the soup propagates from mind to mind, through imitation mediated by a recipe which is spoken or written. Depending on how well adapted the soup is to the social and economic context, as well as the culinary customs in a given group, it may spread or it may remain confined to a single person or group of persons, until it either disappears, or it mutates into a more successful version. Other examples include religious traditions, gestures, clothing fashions, jokes and other oral traditions, sports, and many more.
My view of memes is not the same as that of Susan Blackmore and Richard Dawkins, mainly due to the fact that I don’t think they are units of cultural evolution any more than genes are units of biological evolution.
I see both biological and cultural evolution as complex ecosystems composed of auto-catalytic cycles, that is groups of objects which interact in ways that help bring about and maintain the conditions necessary for their continued production. This is a generalized definition of a metabolism.
In my view neither genes nor memes are special or different from other organic compounds or ideas present in our bodies and minds. They are participants in the auto-catalytic cycles leading to their own and the other participants reciproduction.
Reciproduction is a term I coined in the article on “Theism and the logic of evolution” in order to avoid using the term “reproduction” which is burdened with a long history of usage in the biological sciences. My view of reproduction is sufficiently different and in particular more general than the currently accepted biological view of reproduction to warrant a different terminology. It emphasizes the interdependent nature of the origin, evolution and demise of both physical and mental objects, and the fact that viewing living systems (or any systems at all, for that matter) as independent reproducing entities, is misleading. Every object is part of a symbiotic cycle composed of other objects which may be either physical or mental, and either alive (in the traditional sense) or not. The term reciproduction therefore applies to a very much larger set of objects than the term reproduction, which is confined only to those objects which modern biology has defined as living for its own narrow purposes.
I therefore see genes and memes as simply information bottlenecks in the auto-catalytic or symbiotic cycles that make their continued existence possible. They are not fundamentally special but only through their usefulness to us, human beings. The genome is useful for a scientist trying to understand the body, but from a more detached point of view, it is just another participant in the great chemical cycle which is our metabolism. The idea of “chicken soup” may seem remarkable to us because we have it in our heads, and it has immediate reality to us, but it would never have lasted as long as it has without the other members of its cycle: its name (written or spoken), its recipe, its smell, taste, color and consistency, and its ingredients containing the substances (fats, sugars, fiber, etc) which our metabolism needs. All of these physical and mental objects interact in such a way as to help bring about their own continued production. While it may seem that some of the members of the cycle are more important than others, so that the spoken name in some language is just a carrier, and not worthy to be seen as on the same footing as the idea of the soup, or the soup itself, this is not always the case. Consider the case of brands, which are spoken or written words which clearly have a “life” of their own.
The biological consequence of these arguments is that the goal in the life of any living being is not to “transmit the genes” per se, though that is part of it. Kimura’s neutral theory of evolution has shown that genes change often and the vast majority of the changes they undergo have no impact on fitness. The genes themselves are not important. What is important is that the metabolic cycle keep turning. It is the cycle as a whole that survives and perpetuates, not the genes, since the genes often undergo many random mutations, most of them with little or no change in the corresponding phenotypes (be they physical or behavioral).
