In
his book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, argues that culture
represents a Darwinian struggle among memes.
He sees a meme not as a mind-virus but as "a unit of cultural
transmission, or a unit of imitation,”
just as a gene is a unit of biological transmission. That is to say, memes
replicate through imitation, and some are more successful at this than others.
So Darwin’s concept of genetic (natural) selection is replicated in, and eventually is to be surpassed by, Dawkins’ idea of memetic selection: “Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic
transmission...[and] can give rise to a form of evolution” (but see note 1 below, in which Susan Blackmore makes a case for The Third Replicator).
Genes are domiciled in the gene pool, which,
broadly speaking, is the biosphere – itself a crucial component of nature (bio-geosphere) as such. Conversely, memes are domiciled in the “meme pool”, which,
broadly speaking, is the ideosphere – or culture.
I broadly define culture here to include rules, values, symbols of all kinds,
artistic endeavours, scientific and other ideas (including human ingenuity and
inventiveness), rituals and practices of all sorts, artefacts (as both the
basis and outcome of practices), inventions, technology (as a fusion of
knowledge, know-how, software, hardware, orgware and practices of all sorts), memories
of the past as well as visions of the future, and a widening range of structures
and systems developed in the course of social life. There are several 'classical' definitions of culture, such as Geertz's and Taylor's, which mine has benefited from -- and which mine will hopefully be seen to add value to.
Dawkins suggests that the crucial role that genes,
being replicators, play in biological evolution will be increasingly matched by
the role played by memes in cultural evolution – based on the principle (or
law) that “all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating
entities.” Eventually, he implies, memes will be more crucial to human survival
and indeed evolution than the genes have hitherto been. In other words, the cultural
environment, the meme pool in which
memes thrive and indeed evolve, rather than the biosphere as such, may eventually be the primary catalyst even of genetic-biological
evolution as we have understood it -- and even if such catalysis comes about via the highly technical, meme-driven, tweaking of the physical environment, or of its actual or likely consequences if unmediated, over extended Time.
That is to say, if the “old gene-selected evolution,
by making brains, provided the ‘soup’ in which the first meme arose,” then the
meme-selected evolution, by making culture – through the dialectical interface of
the brain (human thought and conscious practice) and not just the biosphere but the
geosphere as well -- is providing the ‘soup’ (the cultural ‘soup’) in which the
meme will replace the gene as the dominant, speedier, force in the biological evolutionary
process.
One piece of undeniable evidence of meme-induced genetic evolution -- evidence of which each non-black human is a breathing example -- is natural skin colour? Variation in skin colour, the basis of the lay individual's idea of racial difference, began only as a result of human migration and adaptation to climates, "ages" (such as the series of documented ice ages) and regions far from the origin of humankind in Africa (
read more here). Human (ex-African) survival in those other 'climes' was due to adaptation, but the point being made by Dawkins and others (such as
Laland, Odlin-Smee and Myles) -- and to which I subscribe -- is that adaptation itself was possible only because of the array of memes (that is, ideas and broader clusters of culture-items) which humans brought along with them or devised along the way and through time (for more on my take on human migration with reference to Dr. Alice Roberts' documentary titled "The Incredible Human Journey",
click on this link, or this).
Among the most important, and typically overlapping or mutually reinforcing, memes must surely have been: (a) the long-term development and coordinated use of language (following the mutation associated with the language gene) for survival and unprecedented capacities for collective strategy, conquest and advancement, (b) body cover (animal skins and furs to begin with) consciously crafted to help outlast the long wintry seasons (
read more here), (c) the shoe meme, (d) weapons (including projectiles) and body armour of all kinds, (e) built shelters and other safe-haven spaces, (f) utensils and tools for a multiplicity of purposes, (g) an evolving chain of ontological, governance and management ideas, (h) the conquest of fire, (i) transportation modes adapted to terrains come upon over time, and (j)
changing ideas about diet.
All forms of cross-breeding (of dogs, horses and cattle, for example), are examples of meme-based evolutionary trending. Except, of course, that such trending is possible only if the problematics of sterility, deformity, pathology, retardation, runaway or cancerous growth, and/or other congenital dead-ends are overcome and healthy intergenerational replication assured. Other potential examples of genetic (re)engineering or preservation driven by memes include the lab-enabled production of GM foods or other substances; the building of normative, legal and physical sanctuaries for species endangered by the consequences of our own intended or unintended decisions, or by long-term ecological change; and artificial insemination (as is becoming increasingly necessary for
giant pandas).
In articulating his ideas about memes, and
about the connection between memes and genes, Dawkins has of course benefited
immensely from the thoughts of Aaron Lynch and Douglas Hofstader. In addition,
his conversation relating memes to culture or the ideosphere must be seen in
the context of his precursors’ own conceptualizations of the ideosphere and the
noosphere, for example; and of how these impact the geosphere. Important among these
precursors are: Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), Edouard Le Roy (1870-1954), and Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). More recent writers are of course picking up from them.
Certain other questions, related or unrelated to the above conversation, obviously need to be asked about meme-driven evolution. Let me ask a few:
- Didn’t someone say two or so decades ago that our little toe is doomed to extinction due to the ‘invention’ of shoes; that is, due to the continued dominance of the shoe meme at our feet? If that were doubly true, would it be an example of the sort of culture- or meme-induced biological evolution that is being suggested? And aren’t there similar examples already? [But some people are fighting back against that evolutionary menace, as you will read here]
- Would life after the conscious extinction of a pathology such as small pox or, hopefully, sickle cell anaemia be a tell-tale form of evolution – whose evolution? What about the eradication of blindness, or the meme-assisted growth of 3rd to nth generation teeth? [In both cases, Smith (1993) would argue, it is human evolution. The article by Young et al (2005), focusing on differential susceptibility to hypertension, is relevant here -- certainly in a back-handed way]
- Will not the long-term, technology-intensive, survival over many millennia of human voyagers through otherwise unrelentingly hostile outer space involve a form of meme-impacted evolution that mirrors what we have seen with human migration on earth? Or will the evolutionary ‘switch’ inside the artificial environments (or constructed 'niches') have to involve something more drastic and more sudden – such as a new, spider-like, human skeleton, as has already been predicted? In which case, might the spiders in our midst be marooned (‘reverse’) aliens? [Laland, Odling-Smee and Myles (2010) have given a very strong and direct answer to the question about the influence of meme-inspired niches on genetic change (see note 3 at the bottom of this article; Lehman (2007) also interrogates the evolutionary effects of "niche construction" in an interesting way, though not quite with the focus of attention called for by this question]
- Will it be correct, and if so proper, to see the genetic modifications and hybridities likely to result from future scientific work as incremental acts of creation, so long as the results of those acts meet the set criteria for high and long-term memetic-genetic survival and evolution, namely: longevity, fecundity (or speed of replication) and copying-fidelity (Dawkins, 1989: 17, 194), as well as a conquering devotion to the future (what Lynch calls "motivational advantage"), broad acceptance by the general public (Lynch calls this "cognitive advantage"), and the elimination of all threats (in Lynch's words, "sabotaging the competition") that stand in the way of meeting the set criteria?(see Lynch, 1996; read Paul Marsden's review of Lynch's book, Thought Contagion).
Notes: 1. Here is is an account of Susan Blackmore's variation on the above theme, attributing a new form of evolution to digital information. In an article in The New York Times of August 10, 2010, Susan Blackmore herself "conversed" about the existence of a third replicator -- the teme (the technological meme), a concept which, unlike Dawkins' meme, refers to "digital information stored, copied, varied and selected by machines" -- presumably machines made by humans and not machines (although machines making machines can already be imagined and attempted, by humans)
3. Laland, Odling-Smee and Mlyes (2010) point out as follows: "...niche construction can modify selection,...can allow the persistence of organisms in inhospitable environmental conditions that could otherwise lead to their extinction, and be favoured even when costly because of the benefits that will accrue to distant descendants. However, mathematical models reveal that niche construction due to cultural processes can be even more potent than niche construction due to other (gene-based) non-cultural processes, and they show that cultural niche construction can modify selection on human genes, with resulting effects on evolutionary outcomes. Indeed, human niche construction is informed by a uniquely potent and cumulative cultural knowledge base."
4. I first came across John Maynard Smith's book titled The Theory of Evolution, which was published in 1993, only this morning (May 12, 2012), as I browsed in the Jomo Kenyatta Memorial Library at the University of Nairobi. Based on my quick reading, especially of the last chapter, I note that Smith, like Dawkins, had already made a number of the key points that I make above. However, some of the important ones that I make do not seem to explicitly feature in Smith's book; for example, the shoe meme, the memetic basis for human 'racial' groups, the 'language gene' (on page 343 of the book he remarks that don't know "how ancient speech is", but they have since come to know).
In particular, I should reiterate here what I have been meaning to since May 2, I should underscore here the meme that, I think, is of the greatest importance (second only to language as a whole) to human spread, survival and evolution across the planet's colder surfaces and across time -- a meme far greater than the shoe meme or the housing meme, or even the genetic resistance to infectious diseases which Smith (1993: 330), I note belatedly, so strongly emphasizes -- this is the clothing meme. The invention and progressive refinement of clothing -- a concept I use here as an umbrella term for all forms of warm and dry all-body cover against the elements, in particular extremely cold weathers or climates -- I believe, is at the root of human conquest of the earth; just as it will be of our conquest of other earth-like planets.
Smith (1993: 343?) remarks that "Evolution tends to adapt the nature of animals to their environments. In history, man has adapted his environment to his nature." However, the clothing meme reveals something significantly more subtle. It does not exemplify the conscious adapting of the natural environment to human nature. Instead, it is (let me say it clumsily) a massively consequential 'sleight of hand' -- a 'magical' sort of simulation or mimicry (of animal nature, say mammoth, wolf, reindeer, polar bear or bison), an illusionist's 'going under the skin' -- which represents, and whose consequences are, nothing less than the adaptation, at once virtual and contrived/artificial and real, of human nature to the natural environment.
5. Additional material inserted on April 20, 22, 27, 28, 2012; May 1, 2, 12, 2012.
