richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

T H E ROOTS OF RELIGION 193
the problem is illusory. Think of a master carpenter, or a prehistoric
flint-knapper, demonstrating a particular skill to a young
apprentice. If the apprentice faithfully reproduced every hand
movement of the master, you would indeed expect to see the meme
mutate out of all recognition in a few 'generations' of
master/apprentice transmission. But of course the apprentice does
not faithfully reproduce every hand movement. It would be ridiculous
to do so. Instead, he notes the goal that the master is trying to
achieve, and imitates that. Drive in the nail until the head is flush,
using as many hammer blows as it takes, which may not be the
same number as the master used. It is such rules that can pass
unmutated down an indefinite number of imitation 'generations';
no matter that the details of their execution may vary from
individual to individual, and from case to case. Stitches in knitting,
knots in ropes or fishing nets, origami folding patterns, useful tricks
in carpentry or pottery: all can be reduced to discrete elements that
really do have the opportunity to pass down an indefinite number
of imitation generations without alteration. The details may
wander idiosyncratically, but the essence passes down unmutated,
and that is all that is needed for the analogy of memes with genes
to work.
In my foreword to Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine I
developed the example of an origami procedure for making a model
Chinese junk. It is quite a complicated recipe, involving thirty-two
folding (or similar) operations. The end result (the Chinese junk
itself) is a pleasing object, as are at least three intermediate stages
in the 'embryology', namely the 'catamaran', the 'box with two
lids' and the 'picture frame'. The whole performance does indeed
remind me of the foldings and invaginations that the membranes of
an embryo undergo as it morphs itself from blastula to gastrula to
neurula. I learned to make the Chinese junk as a boy from my
father who, at about the same age, had acquired the skill at his
boarding school. A craze for making Chinese junks, initiated by the
school matron, had spread through the school in his time like a
measles epidemic, then died away, also like a measles epidemic.
Twenty-six years later, when that matron was long gone, I went to
the same school. I reintroduced the craze and it again spread, like
another measles epidemic, and then again died away. The fact that