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The ‘new science of memetics’: The case

for Susan Blackmore

Susuan Blackmore

Think / Volume 2 / Issue 05 / September 2003, pp 21 - 26

DOI: 10.1017/S1477175600002554, Published online: 22 July 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

abstract_S1477175600002554

How to cite this article:

Susuan Blackmore (2003). The ‘new science of memetics’: The case for
Susan Blackmore. Think, 2, pp 21-26 doi:10.1017/S1477175600002554

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 THE 'NEW SCIENCE OF MEMETICS': THE CASE FOR
Susan Blackmore

In this article and the following one, Susan Black-

more and Michael Bradie take contrary positions on
the 'science of memetics', an approach to explaining
human behaviour and culture based on the idea that
our minds and cultures are in large part determined —i
by self-replicating gene-like entities called 'memes'. =•
Memes would seem to allow the application of evo- *"
lutionary ideas to both biology and culture. Many find Q
that thought exciting and appealing. Others consider £
it arrogant and scientistic. Who is right? 3

The term 'meme' was coined by Richard Dawkins in his o

1976 bestseller The Selfish Gene. Memes are habits, skills, §
or behaviours that are passed from person to person by •
imitation. Familiar memes include words and stories, TV and w
radio programmes, famous symphonies or mindless jingles,
games and sports, religions, cults and scientific theories. The
important point about memes — and indeed the reason why
Dawkins invented the term — is that they are replicators.
That is, they are information that varies and is selectively
copied. While genes compete to get replicated when plants
and animals reproduce, memes compete to get stored in our
memories (or books, tapes and computers) and get passed
on to someone else.
On this view, our minds and culture are designed by the
competition between memes, just as plants and animals are
designed by the competition between genes. Thus we can im-
agine a unified evolutionary theory of both culture and biology.
The relationship between memes and genes is important here.
This is not an analogy. The point is that both are replicators
and in that sense they are the same, while in other respects
they are quite different; one being stored and replicated inside
cells; the other requiring the complexities of human brains
and behaviour. Understanding this point is critical for avoiding
some of the confusions into which memetics can fall.

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 Among the many criticisms of memetics are that memes
have not been proved to exist, cannot be identified with any
chemical or physical structure as genes can, cannot be divided
into meaningful units, provide no better understanding of cul-
ture than existing theories, and that memetics undermines the
important notions of free will and personal responsibility.
These are interesting, but not fatal, objections. Memes ob-
CN viously exist, since humans imitate widely, and memes are
defined as whatever they imitate. The demand for a physical
^ basis is premature. The structure of DNA was not discovered
.O until a century after Darwin, so we may be in the equivalent
"Q3 of the pre-DNA phase in memetics. The question of units is
£ tricky for genes too and geneticists use different units in dif-
c ferent circumstances. We can do the same with memes, so
,__ that sometimes, for example, an entire symphony may be
£ replicated, while at other times just a few notes are passed
<b on. In this case those few notes are the relevant meme.
O More important to science is whether memetics provides
^ any new insights into human behaviour or culture. I am con-
O vinced that it does, and that we need a science of memetics
~ to understand human origins and culture just as much as we
have needed the theory of evolution in biology. To explain this
I will begin with a simple example; Dawkins's idea of religions
as viruses of the mind. A biological virus is a small package
of information that uses someone else's copying machinery
for its own replication. An equivalent in memes might be a
chain letter or e-mail virus. For example, you might receive
an e-mail message that says 'A deadly virus called "Free In-
quiry" is circulating by e-mail. IBM and Microsoft warn that it
is powerful and untreatable. It will destroy all the information
in your computer. Pass this warning on to all your friends
immediately.' This little piece of information is a complete lie
but by using threats (to your computer), promises (you can
help your friends), and an instruction to pass it on, it thrives.
Religions, argues Dawkins, have a similar structure. They use
threats (hell and damnation), promises (heaven, salvation,
and God's love), and instructions to pass them on (teach your

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 children, read the texts, pray and sing in public). Moreover,
they use other tricks to protect themselves from scepticism.
A child who asks why she can't see God is told to have faith,
not doubt.
This approach also explains something that is inexplicable
in purely biological terms — the celibate priest. A true celibate
cannot pass on his genes, but having no children means he
can devote his time and resources to spreading more memes -i
— including the meme for celibacy, which therefore thrives. =•
Apart from religions, other viral memes include alternative *"
therapies that don't work, New Age fads and cults, and the ^
ever-popular astrology. £•
I started with viral memes because they are easy to explain, 3
D
but the vast majority of memes are not viruses — they are the
very foundation of our lives and cultures, including transport o
and communications, political and monetary systems, and all Q
of the arts and sciences. And note that science has a very dif- •
ferent structure from religions. Both are memeplexes (groups £^
of memes that work together), and science certainly contains
viral memes such as false theories and fraudulent claims, but
the very basis of science is its method of questioning its own
claims. This means that science can throw out any ideas that
prove useless or false in a way that religions cannot.
This applies to memetics too. It should only be accepted
if it provides useful, new and testable, theories. So does it?
Perhaps its most powerful claims concern the question of
human origins. Humans alone on this planet are capable of
widespread, generalised imitation (dolphins, some birds, and
a few primates are capable of limited imitation but most other
species almost certainly are not). This means that we alone
are the product of two replicators (memes and genes), not
just one. This insight provides new theories about two per-
sistent mysteries in human origins — that is, our big brains
and language.
If we assume that imitation is difficult and requires a big
brain, then the following argument applies. Any of our early
ancestors who had slightly bigger brains (and therefore slightly
better imitation) would have been at an advantage because

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 they could pick up and use the latest memes — whether these
were ways of hunting, cooking food, wearing clothes, or danc-
ing and singing. These people would therefore have attracted
more mates and had more offspring. So, as the memes spread,
so did genes for having big brains capable of spreading (and
selecting) them. In other words, big brains evolved to spread
memes, not genes.
•^ If this is so, the whole of human evolution has been shaped
by the successful memes of the past — both the useful ones
^ and the useless viruses. Language is an example. As early
.y hominids began copying sounds, some spread more than
15 others, and people with brains better able to spread the
E successful sounds were at an advantage. Gradually human
c brains became shaped to be especially good at spreading
u_ language. In other words language too evolved not primarily
£ for the genes, but for the memes.
<D Human altruism is another of our odd characteristics. Many
O people put enormous efforts into helping others who are not
£ their relatives (i.e. do not share their genes) and who are
O unlikely or unable to reciprocate. In other words these behav-
5 iours are hard to explain biologically. These include pacifism,
vegetarianism, charity work, recycling, the Green movement,
and the caring professions. The memetic approach is to ask
why these particular memes spread. One theory is that people
want to be liked and therefore copy behaviours from those they
perceive as altruistic. Another is that we spend more time with
generous people, giving their memes more chances to spread
— including their altruistic memes. There are other memetic
theories of altruism and they lead to testable predictions, in
terms of who imitates which behaviours from whom.
One final application of memetics is to the origins of the self.
I suggest that the reason we have a self at all is that ideas
that become 'my' beliefs, or 'my' hopes, or 'my' intentions, are
more likely to get passed on, and when they do they spread
the false idea of a self that holds those beliefs, makes the deci-
sions, and has free will. On this view, all our actions are the
consequences of memes and genes competing to be copied

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 in a complex environment, and one result is the illusion of a
powerful inner self.
This is where the moral objections of the critics come to
the fore. They argue that without a sense of self — with free
will and personal responsibility — we could not have effective
legal systems or expect people to behave morally. I disagree.
We have already seen that altruism can arise from memetic
competition. There is no reason to believe we would all be- —i
have much worse if we accepted the illusory nature of the 5'
self. Indeed many people argue that the self is the root of all *"
human suffering, and that practices like meditation, which aim ^
to undermine it, lead people to behave better, not worse. £~
In any case, I am not prepared to reject any theory just 3
because it may have dubious consequences for morality and -3
legal systems. If a theory is valid then I will accept it. So what o
about memetics? §
Taking the meme's eye view can have as dramatic an effect •
as taking the gene's eye view. That is, we begin to see the ££
world around us as the result of selfish memes competing to
use us for their own propagation, rather than seeing us as
rational beings in charge of our world. But is this view better?
Certainly the theories I have outlined provide testable predic-
tions, for example concerning the nature and time-course of
human evolution, the structure of religions and cults, and how
and when we copy behaviours from one another. But the nec-
essary research is only beginning. So we must be patient for
our answer — and determined to accept or reject memetics,
not because we like or dislike it, but because of the results
of that research.

Susuan Blackmore has given up her academic post to pur-

sue her own research. Both this article and the following are
reprinted by kind permission of Free Inquiry, the journal of
the Council for Secular Humanism (www.secularhumanism.
org).

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 Further reading
S.J. Blackmore, The Meme Machine (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1999).
R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1976 — new edition with additional material, 1989)
D. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea (London: Penguin,
1995)
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