The Meme Machine

THREE PROBLEMS WITH MEMES 61
One way to draw the analogy is to stick to the notion of the human genotype,
phenotype and generation. In this case, acquired characteristics are certainly
passed on, as when religions are transmitted from parents to children generation
after generation. But memes do not stick to biological generations and can jump
about all over the place. If I invent a brilliant new recipe for pumpkin soup, I
can pass it on to you and you can pass it on to your granny and she can pass it on
to her best friend. Also, this is not inheritance in the biological sense and the
genes are not affected. So it is not Lamarckian.
A more interesting way to use the analogy is to forget about phenotypes and
biological generations and look at memes and memetic generations. In the case
of the soup there were three generations between me and your granny’s best
friend. In each generation, the recipe went from brain to behaviour in the
kitchen and on to the next brain (that is if you watched me make the soup). Was
there inheritance of acquired characteristics? Let us say that the meme in my
brain is the equivalent of the genotype and my behaviour in the kitchen is the
equivalent of the phenotype. Then, yes, inheritance is Lamarckian because if I
put in too much salt on this occasion, or you forget one of my special herbs, or
fail to copy the way I shred the garlic, then you will pass on this new version
when your granny watches you, and so the new phenotype will have acquired
the characteristics accordingly.
But what if you did not watch me make the soup? What if I sent you the
recipe in the post and you passed it on to your granny and she made a photocopy
for her friend? Now the situation is quite different. ‘We may draw the analogy
with biology this way. The written recipe is like the genotype, it contains the
instructions for making the soup. The soup is like the phenotype. The delicious
taste of the soup is the reason why the recipe is copied – your granny only asked
for a copy of the recipe because she liked the soup. In this case, if she fails to
follow the recipe correctly her alterations may affect the chance of someone else
wanting the recipe, but the alterations will not be passed on because they are
only in the soup itself (phenotype) not in the written recipe (genotype). In this
case the process is perfectly analogous to the biological situation and is not
Lamarckian.
I shall call these different modes of transmission ‘copy-the-product’ and
‘copy-the-instructions’. Music provides a slightly different example. Let us
suppose that my daughter plays a beautiful piece of music for her friends and
one of them wants to learn to play it too. Emily could either play it many times
until her friend can copy it accurately (copy-the-product), or simply hand her the
written music in a book (copy-the-instructions). In the first case, any changes