The Meme Machine

THE LIMITS OF SOCIOBIOLOGY 119
proposing here adds the further process of memetic driving.
The point is that everything changes when you arrive at the top floor. And it
changes dramatically. This is because imitation creates a second replicator.
None of the previous steps has created a second replicator – at least, not one that
operates beyond the confines of the individual. For example, Skinnerian
learning and Popperian problem-solving can be seen as selective processes, but
they are all going on inside one animal’s head. The patterns of behaviour and
the hypotheses about outcomes that are selected might be seen as replicators, but
they are not let loose on the world unless they are copied by imitation and so
become memes.
Getting to the fourth floor means letting loose a replicator that spreads from
creature to creature, setting its own agenda as it goes. Of course the genes had
no foresight. They could not know that selection for imitation would let loose a
second replicator, but that is what it has done, and so we enter the phase of genememe
coevolution. In this kind of coevolution things happen that serve to
spread memes whether or not they spread genes – the dog is off its leash and the
slaves have rebelled against their former masters. This is what makes the theory
different from previous ones and provides alternative predictions. I suggest that
the human brain is an example of memes forcing genes to build ever better and
better meme-spreading devices. The brain was forced to grow bigger far faster
and at much greater cost than would be predicted on the grounds of biological
advantage alone, and this is why it stands out so obviously in any comparisons
of encephalisation. Theories based only on biological advantage cannot explain
why the genes were forced to pay such a high price in terms of energy
consumption and the dangers of birth (see Chapter 6). Theories based on
memetic advantage can.
You might still argue that in terms of sheer brain size the results are not so
very different from the argument based on the Baldwin effect. However, the big
difference between the theories should come in terms of the specific direction in
which the brain evolves, not just its size. If the memes have replicator power
then they should drive the genes to produce a brain that is specifically suitable
for replicating them, rather than one that is designed for some specifically
genetic purpose. We should be able to derive predictions based on the
requirements of the new replicator to see whether the actual human brain fits the
bill. This is precisely what I tried to do in the argument for the evolution of
language. The brain we have is a brain designed for spreading memes with high
fidelity, fecundity, and longevity.
As it turns out, the big brains have been enormously successful for genes too,