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Selfish Meme, the: A Critical Reassessment
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Evolution
by: Kate Distin
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Culture is a unique and fascinating aspect of the human species. How did it emerge and how does it develop? Richard Dawkins has suggested that culture evolves and that memes are the cultural replicators, subject to variation and selection in the same way as genes function in the biological world. In this sense human culture is the product of a mindless evolutionary algorithm. Does this imply that we are mere meme machines and that the conscious self is an illusion? Kate Distin extends and strengthens Dawkins's theory and presents a fully developed and workable concept of cultural DNA. She argues that culture's development can be seen both as the result of memetic evolution and as the product of human creativity. Memetic evolution is therefore compatible with the view of humans as conscious and intelligent.
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A nascent science examined
Daniel C. Dennett once asked: "Could there be a science of memetics?" Distin responds to this query with a resounding "Yes!". With her title filched from Richard Dawkins, she launches a campaign for better recognition and understanding of the meme concept. Memes, she reminds us, are information packets jumping from mind to mind. They inhabit "hosts" in the same way DNA genes do bodies. They replicate, like a gene, down successive generations. When enough of them are accumulated in a population of hosts, you have a society identified as a particular "culture". Cultures, of course, are distinguished among one another by identifiable traits - dress, music, taboos, even foods. Distin attempts to explain how these distinctions are created.
Her approach, the analogy of biological and cultural evolution, was initiated by Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene". Distin strengthens that similarity with her analysis. Like the biological gene, the informational meme must be able to successfully replicate. The gene copies itself by assembling the proper chemical elements into a duplicate. The meme, intact in one mind, must find a way to copy itself to another. The copy should be exact, but like the gene, which may carry a mutation, or undergo the "match and swop" process of meiosis, may be modified in the recipient's mind. Like the biological gene, such an inexact copy may be more easily accepted and, hence, strengthened. Such a successful modification from the original is "variation". Variation offers a collection of memes that may prove more acceptable to a culture than are others. This process, called "selection" in both biology and memetics, is the basis of evolution. Cultures may thus evolve in a manner similar to that of biology. The major difference is that memes can successfully vary faster than can genes.
Distin presents her ideas of the origins of memes and their heritage so far as it's understood today. The complexities of various human cultures, she says, can be broken down - "reduced" - to assemblages of memes known as "memeplexes". The memeplex is a compound idea or practice that distinguishes one culture's identifiable traits from those of another. Many critics of memetics have challenged the validity or worth of cultural transmission and innovation through memes. Distin brings some of these critics into the discussion and examines their worth. Some criticisms she welcomes as worthy of consideration, but she demonstrates why even their acceptance doesn't refute the idea of memes as the basis for culture. Others Distin dismisses as having missed the point. She points out that too many people, memeticists and critics alike, often make too firm a link between the biological and cultural realms. She is particularly vigourous in her denunciation of Edward O. Wilson's sociobiology.
In her attempts to deal with critics or even allies in support of memetics, Distin ranges from the scathing to the subtle. Her rejection of Blackmore's "imitation" theme in "The Meme Machine" is nearly absolute. Distin seems to want to grant memes a more active role than Blackmore accepts. Distin even has the courage to challenge Dawkins himself. She contends his "virus of the mind" concept is overdrawn. In Dawkins' view, there are "replicators" and "parasites", but Distin would prefer to omit any value judgement in regard to memes and remain with "replicators" alone. Her assault on Dennett sounds plausible at first reading. His idea that memes predated higher cognition in humans seems unlikely. In effect, Distin lays down a bed of coals, draws over them nearly everybody who has considered the meme idea, then set them aside. Yet, as you follow her presentation, Distin manages to resurrect each of their concepts to simply reassert them in her own words!
As an introduction to memetics, this book is of some value. Distin presents the issues well, explains the meaning of memetic concepts and their biological parallels. However, in such a brief format, Distin can carry her arguments only to rather shallow depths. Many readers will want more, but memetics isn't laboratory science. Although she does manage to answer Dennett's question that memetics can be studied as a science, there is much work ahead. Distin has solved few of the serious issues confronting memetics. At best, Distin may inspire young researchers to take up the cause she promotes. There are few real answers in this book.