The Meme Machine

THREE PROBLEMS WITH MEMES 65
phenotype applies easily to one but not to the other and there may be other
modes of transmission as well. I will not, therefore, use the concept of the
meme-phenotype because I cannot give it a clear and unambiguous meaning.
Another analogy is made with the concept of the vehicle. Dawkins (1982)
originally introduced the distinction between replicators and vehicles in the
context of genetic selection, in order to make clear that the genes are the selfish
replicators, while it is much larger units – typically (though not necessarily)
whole organisms – that either live or die. He described organisms as vehicles
for the genes, built to carry them around and protect them. Dawkins defines a
vehicle as ‘any unit, discrete enough to seem worth naming, which houses a
collection of replicators and which works as a unit for the preservation and
propagation of those replicators’ (p. 114).
Using this concept, Dennett treats memes as ideas and the physical objects
that carry them around as meme vehicles. So, for example, ‘A wagon with
spoked wheels carries not only grain or freight from place to place; it carries the
brilliant idea of a wagon with spoked wheels from mind to mind’ (Dennett 1995,
p. 348 and 1991, p. 204). Pictures, books, tools and buildings are all meme
vehicles for Dennett, and he explicitly makes the comparison with gene vehicles.
Brodie (1996) follows Dennett and uses the term ‘vehicle’ for physical
manifestations of a meme, as do others. However, there are problems with this
analogy (Speel 1995). A wagon may indeed carry around the idea of spoked
wheels but does it house a collection of replicators? Does it work as a unit for
the preservation and propagation of its memes? A book may seem very much
like a vehicle in this sense, but my pumpkin soup does not. I am not at all sure
where to draw the lines here.
We must avoid the temptation of assuming there must always be a vehicle,
and therefore forcing the memes to fit. Dawkins says he coined the ‘vehicle’ not
to praise it but to bury it. There is no necessity for vehicles to form, and in
many kinds of evolution they may not. We should not ask, ‘What is the vehicle
in this situation,’ but, ‘Is there a vehicle in this situation and, if so, why?’
(Dawkins, 1994, p. 617). We might therefore ask whether memes do in fact
group together to make ‘a unit for the preservation and propagation of those
replicators’ and if so what would these true meme vehicles look like? Large
self-preserving memeplexes such as religions, scientific theories, or political
ideologies might fit the analogy better than wagons and recipes but obviously
the term ‘vehicle’ is being used in quite a different sense here. Finally, the term
‘vehicle’ can be used in the very ordinary sense that people carry both genes and