The Meme Machine

THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURE 31
evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary
sense be subservient to the old (Dawkins 1976, pp. 193–4, italics in the original).
Of course, memes could only come into existence when the genes had
provided brains that were capable of imitation – and the nature of those brains
must have influenced which memes took hold and which did not. However,
once memes had come into existence they would be expected to take on a life of
their own.
Dawkins argued that biologists had so deeply assimilated the idea of genetic
evolution that they tended to forget that it is only one of many possible kinds of
evolution. He complained of his colleagues that ‘In the last analysis they wish
always to go back to “biological advantage”’ (Dawkins 1976, p. 193). In other
words, they might accept the idea of memes, or some kind of unit of cultural
evolution, but then still believe that memes must always act somehow for the
benefit of the genes. But this is missing the whole point of the second replicator.
If memes are replicators, as I am convinced they are, then they will not act for
the benefit of the species, for the benefit of the individual, for the benefit of the
genes, of indeed for the benefit of anything but themselves. That is what it
means to be a replicator.
I am labouring this point because I am now going to review some theories of
cultural evolution that have introduced the idea of a second replicator – or at
least some kind of new cultural unit. (Durham 1991 provides a more thorough
review.) At first sight these may all appear equivalent to the idea of the meme,
but they are not. There are many similarities and differences but the most
important point to look for is whether the new unit is really being treated as a
replicator in its own right. If it is not then the theory is not equivalent to
memetics.
In 1975, just before Dawkins proposed the idea of memes, the American
anthropologist F.T. Cloak wrote about cultural instructions. He pointed out that
whenever we see any behaviour being performed we assume that there is some
internal structure in the animal’s nervous system that causes that behaviour. All
animals have such instructions but humans, unlike other animals, can acquire
new instructions by observing and imitating others. Cloak suggested that culture
is acquired in tiny, unrelated snippets that he called ‘corpuscles of culture’ or
‘cultural instructions’.
Furthermore, he distinguished very carefully between the instructions in
people’s heads and the behaviour, technology or social organization that those
instructions produce. The former he called ‘i-culture’ and the latter the ‘mculture’.