Babak Amini

 b_amini86@yahoo.com 

Memetics has become a popular and widely-used concept/method in many areas, including cultural studies. However, I believe Memetics has some fundamental methodological problems. In this article, I have tried to show some of my main concerns regarding this methodological movement. Memetics uses the fact that Darwinian evolution is merely an abstract algorithm that can be applied to anything as long as it meets three main criteria (explained in details bellow). Memetics, is a form of theories of cultural evolution which tries to show a strong analogy between how genes evolve and how memes, defined as the units of culture, evolve. I have tried to show that drawing such a strong analogy, which is the defining characteristics of Memetics, is a mistake. 

There is a common misunderstanding which I want to draw our attention to at the beginning. Memetics is, by some, seen as the only theory that concerns with cultural evolution. However, in fact, the idea of evolutionary analysis of cultural phenomenon has been around from, at least, the time of Darwin himself (he explores this in the Decent of Man). After the establishment of the theory of evolution, many social scientists and social philosophers tried to come up with a theory of cultural progression based on the evolutionary processes (e.g. William James). What distinguishes Memetics from other theories of cultural evolution is that it tries to draw a strong analogy between that cultural and biological evolution. Contrary to the popular opinion, Dawkin was not the first person who suggested that the Darwinian evolution is an abstract algorithm that can be applied to anything as long as it has three crucial criteria of having replicators (entities which are able to make a faithful copy of themselves), variations in the replicators, and selection pressure, in fact, Darwin himself recognized this in the Decent of Man where he claimed his method to be an abstract algorithm.

An astonishing point about the Darwinian evolution was that he distinguished between the cause of variation from the selection pressure (I will come back to this point later to show that this fundamental fact is missing in Memetics)

There are two sets of problems with the theory of Memetics, namely, ontological and epistemological problems. The problems that I will explore in this article are listed below:

  • Memes as cultural units and non-atomistic characteristic of culture
  • Breakdown of the analogy between genetics and Memetics:
    • Cultural inheritance not being replicators
    • Untraceablility of cultural transmission to the parental origin(s)

After a brief review of the fundamental problems in Memetics, alternatives for cultural studies without memes will be explored.

What is a meme? According to Dawkin, meme is a unit of culture that is replicated by being transmitted from one mind to the other (through various means e.g. language). Also, since the factor of interpretation prevents the ideas to make a perfectly faithful copy of themselves, the variation in memes occurs much wider and faster than that of genes. These variations then are subjected to various selection pressures through time this retain some (successful) memes which become dominant. Furthermore, a memplex is defined as a collection of several memes that are closely related.

            I believe that, in general, culture is non-atomistic; that is, it is not a collection of some atomic constituents. Memetics does not give us criteria to breakdown a cultural phenomenon into its atomic parts, memes. Many Memetics enthusiasts ignore this objection by saying that one can take anything to be a meme and build up the analysis based on that. However, Memetics does claim that culture has atomic parts (units). For example, take the cultural phenomenon “classical music” as a memeplex; one can immediately see that it can be broken down into smaller and smaller parts: classical music à symphonies/Opera/Concerto/Quintet/…à Baroque/Classic/romantic era and so on. These appear to be subunits of this phenomenon (Classical Music) and this list does not seem to terminate at an atomic level to start the analysis of this cultural phenomenon. What happens is that as some point (which can not be decided by only focusing on that particular phenomenon but by looking at the context in which this phenomenon operates) the subdivisions loose the useful (analytically useful) relation with the top priority phenomenon all together (for example the melody of Beethoven Symphony No.9 Mv.4 in relation to classical music in general). Also, any deep analysis of a given cultural phenomenon (for example classical music) has to take into consideration many other (if not the culture as a whole) top level cultural phenomena (for example other types of existing music in a particular society and so on) in order to start the reduction process to a unit suitable for Memetic analysis. That means, in order to know how small a phenomenon should be sensibly broken down (to finally find an atomic unit) one has to put it in an immediate and mediate relation with a cultural context. All of this points out the non-atomistic (or holistic) characteristics of culture which any serious cultural analysis should build its foundation upon.

Moreover, if we look at how an individual acquires ideas, we notice that the possibility of transmission of any cultural inheritance and the possible alternation of the inheritance throughout the process depend on other already existing ideas in one’s mind (system of thinking). This shows that cultural inheritances stand in a very close logical relation with one another and therefore can not be divided up into meaningful units interacting with each other. There is a lack of particularity in cultural inheritances; for example, “an idea about God cannot be separated from other ideas with which it is indissolubly linked in particular religion” (Kuper, Culture by Adam, P.180). As a side effect, the problem with ontology of units of culture obscure the division between meme and memeplex in Memetics to the point which any meme becomes a memeplex (becomes it is potentially dividable into more fundamental parts) and any memeplex can be seen as a meme (if the any further breakdown of a memeplex would create an irreversible discontinuity in the analysis). Even though this might not be the case in natural sciences to provide an accurate definition of concepts used in a theory (for example, defining what exactly one refers to when speaking of “light”) since the concepts presumably reflect the physical reality, precise definitions and divisions of fundamental concepts in a philosophical system is of the most importance.

            At this point, a memeticists might say that even though there might be serious difficulties in atomistic view of culture, this does not affect the close analogy between cultural inheritance (he might still insist on calling it meme) and genes. At this point, I shift the focus to the problems regarding a strong analogy between memes and genes.

            As I mentioned earlier, an astonishing point in the Darwinian Evolution in biology is the crucial separation between the causes of variations and the sources of selection. In Memetics, the cause of variations in memes comes from the fact that every individual might interpret a meme (an idea) differently, and the factor of interpretation creates the variations in mean. However, as I said before, the factor of interpretation does not operate on ideas in isolation (that is, one does not first interpret an idea “by itself” according to a preset “rules of interpretation” and then leave it in contact with all the other already existing ideas in one’s mind); on the contrary, the process of interpretation comes to existence as a tool made up of the existing ideas in one’s mind. For example, the way of interpreting the idea of sexuality differs drastically in the mind of a religious person (I have western religions in mind) to the mind of a nihilist. The act of interpretation set important criteria for whether an idea can be accepted or rejected. This interpretation which is presumably the cause of variation, therefore, becomes a strong force of selection in cultural transmission.

            Cultural inheritances are not replicators. Relicators are units that are able to produce faithful copies of themselves. In Memetics, the replication is done through cultural interactions. For instance, I have the idea A and I talk to you about it and you come to the belief A. This process duplicates the idea A. However, I believe that the ideas are rarely (even though it might occasionally happen this way) transmitted directly. There are many other indirect mechanisms by which an idea is transmitted from one mind to the other. Often, an idea triggers or set the stage for another idea of a variation of the same idea to get accepted in future. In other words, transmission of ideas is done by constructing a pattern of thought in other’s minds as oppose to making a literal copy of ideas in some other minds. For example, as we have heard many times before, it is claimed that violent video games increases the chance of the gamer getting involved in violent actions in real world. The video games does not make a literal copy of the raw idea of violence in the gamers’ mind but what it does is it sets the stage for the propagation of other violent ideas in some gamers (after all, we know it does not true that anyone who plays violent games are equally likely to get involved in actual violent action) Another example is that if someone goes to a restaurant and eats a delicious salad, the recipe of the salad does not make a copy of itself in the person’s mind but this might trigger the idea of using the cooking book to remake the same salad at home. There are many other mechanisms in the complex process of cultural transmission (such as wide range of subconscious effects in cultural transmissions) that Memetics simply ignores or puts in a black box called replication.

            Cultural inheritance is not traceable to a single parental origin since ideas are copied not through a literal copying but a complex process as descried above. In other words, ideas rarely have a single source which prevents lineages between ideas. For example, it rarely happens that a person converts to a religion after a single encounter with an evangelist but it is often happens as a result of a very intricate web of exposure to several believers, being in a necessary social context, having  psychological backgrounds for the potential acceptance of such belief systems and so on. If it is true, therefore, that ideas do not create a lineage (i.e. they do not necessarily are produced from a single source) then, Mandel’s law of inheritance in genetic, which works hand in hand with the theory of evolution is not applicable in Memetics. This also reduces the weight of strong analogy between memes and genes.

            Finally, I want to focus on the importance of Memetics in social sciences and cultural studies. Contrary to the theory of evolution in biology which caused a fundamental shift in the way we think of the origin of species and the process of their evolution, Memetics has not caused any major reformation in the framework of cultural studies. This failure comes from the fact that establishment of a strong analogy between cultural evolution and biological evolution is a mistake. There are other approaches to cultural evolution that provide strong alternatives for Memetics which are internally more consistence. Most Cultural Evolution theorists consider cultural inheritance as important however they consider other mechanisms in addition to Darwinian Evolution to give a complete account of cultural phenomena; for example, I believe that the (more or less) refuted idea of Lamarckian evolution in biology should be reconsidered in a theory of cultural evolution since ideas alter in the people’s minds due to external necessities (for example under political situation many change their ideas to suits the context well) and those who said do not make this alternation in their  system of thought experience great difficulty in maintaining some of their existing set of beliefs. Moreover, some of the analysis that Memetics provide are over-simplistic (if not absurd). For example, take a scientific hypothesis as a meme and the objective is to analyze why a specific hypothesis dominates and the other competing ones gradually fade out. Memeticists might say that the successful hypothesis is the one which is more in harmony the other theories, it has more predictive power, or simplicity and so on. However, Memetics can not give an accurate account of why exactly a particular hypothesis is the successful one and which ones aren’t in general. Memetics tells an already known story (for instance, why the houses in a region look the same is described as the result of communication between the people in that region) but it leave out many parts of the analysis of a phenomenon or put it in a black box (for example, one might still wonder why, despite a wide range of communication between the people of two regions, the shape of the houses are still drastically different and the answer lies in the fact that natural resources at the particular regions or a traditional engineering discipline enforce this difference-so as we can see the answers to these types of question can be found in areas outside Memetics; however, Memeticists can again repackage these answers under its name and says that all those factors that you mentioned can still be considered as selection pressures).