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To follow the rest of this post, you should know a little bit about who Richard Dawkins is, and what memes are. If you have read The Selfish Gene you can safely skip the next two paragraphs.
Richard Dawkins is best known for his outspoken antitheism, but he is a biology professor by profession. His contribution to modern biology is where his fame originally stems from. His first book, The Selfish Gene, elegantly explains and justifies the gene-centric perspective on the theory of evolution to the biologist or the layman. To briefly summarize the book, Dawkins claims that genes are the unit of natural selection. Genes are immortal replicators whose success in nature depends on longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. This changes the purpose of life from a biological standpoint from perpetuating a species to perpetuating a gene. Animals, plants, bacteria, and all other forms of life on earth are simply “survival machines” for the genes. As irrational as this may originally seem, Dawkins convincingly justifies his claims in his book. However, the purpose of my post is not to defend his gene-centric theory, so if you are interested in the theory I suggest picking up the book. It is important to understand Dawkins’ basic ideas on genes to understand the topic I wish to discuss: memetics.
In one chapter of his book, Dawkins defines a new kind of replicator: the meme. Meme’s are essentially ideas with a bit of a twist. He claims that memes evolve in a very similar fashion to genes, however far more rapidly. Their success also depends on longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity. They compete with other memes just as genes compete with allele genes, though in this case not for phenotypic expression but rather for time spent on one’s conscious mind. Though I have much respect for Dawkins as a biologist and as Darwin’s second rottweiler, I think his analogy between memes and genes is specious.
First off, the topic of memetics seems misplaced in a book which otherwise deals solely with biological evolution. Placing the concept of memetics in a book dealing with biological evolution insinuates that there are more parallels between memetic evolution and genetic evolution than there are between genetic evolution and solar evolution, or universal evolution. I think that I could find similar analogies for solar evolution as Dawkins has for memetic evolution. In fact from my perspective, which I will attempt to justify later, memes don’t evolve at all. In this case, solar, universal, and terrestrial evolution are closer to genetic evolution than is memetic evolution, if it can truly be called that.
Though genes are certainly the unit of natural selection in Dawkins’ book, what is it that actually evolves? I suppose it is possible to say that genes evolves through processes such as point mutations, however I find it easier to think that gene-complexes evolve rather than genes. Of course, the possibility exists that I am incorrect in my conjecture, as I am of course not a biologist and my understanding on these subjects is admittedly limited, but nowhere in the book does Dawkins specify whether genes evolve or whether gene-complexes evolve. If we are talking about life (the cell being the basic unit of life) evolving, then I am quite certain that it is the gene-complex evolution we are concerned with rather than the change of genes themselves. It is the gene-complex that follows natural-selection, not the individual gene itself. The gene changes mainly through random mutations. If it is the gene-complex that evolves, we should also look at meme-complex evolution rather than the change of an individual meme itself.
Lets define the meme and meme-complex a bit more specifically. As I stated before, a meme is basically an idea. Of course, as ideas are passed on from person to person, they are often inadvertently altered along their way, and after enough alterations these ideas are grossly different than the original idea. This is not an example of memetic evolution, but rather a lapse in communication. A meme will be defined as the basic idea that is preserved by everyone who hosts the meme in his brain. For instance, my interpretation of God and your interpretation of God may be vastly different; however there will be a certain core tenet that both you and I share about what exactly God is. This core tenet will be the God meme. If you add memes for traditions, hymns, prayers, and so on, you get the religion meme-complex. The God meme, the Santa meme, the Easter meme will never change, however memes for new traditions may be added, and memes for old traditions may gradually be done away with. This would be an example of meme-complex evolution.
Genetic evolution, solar evolution, and universal evolution all occur due to changes in tangible, physical entities. Memetic evolution involves changes in something metaphysical. Being a naturalist, I don’t actually believe that memes are metaphysical. Most likely, ideas and memories have a physical manifestation in your brain. The human psyche, however; has not been mapped out nearly well enough for us to pinpoint exactly what these might be. Though not necessarily inaccurate, it would be incorrect to try and model a macroscopic projectile using the equations of quantum mechanics not due to a lapse in our understanding of physical laws, but due to a calculation impasse. Similarly, it is incorrect to think of memes as physical entities. Until we have a better understanding of the human psyche, it is easier to think of memes as metaphysical entities. Evolution should only deal with physical entities; things that can be measured, and whose measurements can be mathematically manipulated. Memes do not fit this criterion.
Regardless of what is evolving, all evolution has one common characteristic: evolution starts from simplicity and tends towards complexity. This can be seen in biological, universal, solar, star, terrestrial, and all other possible forms of evolution you can think of. This raises a problem with the idea of meme-complex evolution. Memes and meme complexes may be amended and made more accurate as human knowledge increases, however since it is impossible to measure memes, and consequently meme-complexes, how can we measure their complexity? Meme complexity may vary slightly from individual to individual, but for the human race as a whole meme complexity should not be increasing until we are genetically capable of holding more complex ideas than we already are. Accuracy of our ideas is not the same thing as complexity. Thus, meme-complexes should not be described as evolving.
In conclusion, I think memes are essentially a good idea. The change of memes over time should be studied by social scientists. However, I don’t think social scientists should attempt to explain memetics in the language of evolution. A lot of resources will be wasted translating the natural language of memes into the language of evolution, and the ideas conveyed by the evolutionary language may be inaccurate since some of the original message will invariably be lost in the process of translation.
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