Natural Science
This passage is adapted from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (© 1976 Oxford University Press).
Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word: "culture." I use the word not in its snobbish sense, but as a scientist uses it. Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution1. Geoffrey Chaucer could not hold a conversation with a modern Englishman, even though they are linked to each other by an unbroken chain of some twenty generations of Englishmen, each of whom could speak to his immediate neighbors in the chain as a son speaks to his father. Language seems to "evolve" by non-genetic means, and at a rate which is orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution.
As an enthusiastic Darwinian, I have been dissatisfied with explanations that my fellow-enthusiasts have offered for human behavior. They have tried to look for "biological advantages" in various attributes of human civilization. These ideas are plausible as far as they go, but I find that they do not begin to square up to the formidable challenge of explaining culture, cultural evolution, and the immense differences between human cultures around the world2. I think we have got to start again and go right back to first principles. The argument I shall advance is that, for an understanding of the evolution of modern man, we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution.
What, after all, is so special about genes3? The answer is that they are replicators. But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicators and other kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. "Mimeme" comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like "gene." I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate "mimeme" to meme. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches4. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students5. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain.
Imitation, in the broad sense, is how memes can6 replicate. But just as not all genes that can replicate do so successfully, so some memes are more successful in the meme-pool than others. The longevity of any one copy of a meme is probably relatively unimportant, as it is for any one copy of a gene. The copy of the tune "Auld Lang Syne" that exists in my brain will last only for the rest of my life. But I expect there will be copies of the same tune on paper and in people's brains for centuries to come. If the meme is a scientific idea, its spread will depend on how acceptable it is to the population of individual scientists; a rough measure of its survival value could be obtained by counting the number of times it is referred to in successive years in scientific journals7. If it is a popular tune, its spread through the meme pool may be gauged by the number of people heard whistling it in the streets. If it is a style of women's shoe, the population memeticist may use sales statistics from shoe shops.
Some memes, like some genes, achieve brilliant short-term success in spreading rapidly, but do not last long in the meme pool. Popular songs and stiletto heels are examples. Others may continue to propagate themselves for thousands of years, usually because of the great potential permanence of written records8. When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for music, in the color of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. We should not seek immortality in reproduction.
But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool9. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong10.