Lamarckian.

53 Additionally, Lamarckianism assumes that acquired traits must be transmitted, which

is not the case for culture. Through choice, human beings can decide whether or not to pass on a trait
which the cultural unit acquired, and thus, to quote Kronfelder, they can “decide whether inheritance
is Lamarckian or not.”54 Therefore, while sometimes the assertion that memetics, and cultural
evolution at large, follows Lamarckianism is correct up to a point, it also sometimes is not correct at
all. And even when the assertion is accurate, it should not be automatically assumed to demonstrate
that memetics is false – there are times when metaphorical Lamarckism is correct.

Empirical Support for Memetics

Another common resistance to memetics is an alleged lack of empirical to support their
existence. The political theorist Richard Barbrook opines that a “major error in the Memesis statement
is its use of dodgy biological analogies”55 and that “no one has ever seen a meme. You cannot examine
one under a microscope. You cannot measure its impact on the social world. Lacking any credible
scientific evidence, acceptance of the meme theory can only be a pure act of faith.”56 Onar Aam, a
behavioral scientist and memeticist, acknowledges that memetics lacks coherent scientific backing,
but that this problem lies “in the methodology and support fields rather than in the idea itself.”57
The theologian and intellectual historian Alister McGrath also criticizes memetics for lacking
scientific rigor. Although he initially was intrigued by Dawkins’ meme hypothesis, he has since
concluded that “memes can’t be observed, and the evidence can be explained perfectly well without
them.”58 McGrath accuses Dawkins of talking about memes in the way that believers talk about God
– as “an invisible, unverifiable postulate, which helps explain some things about experience, but
ultimately lies beyond empirical investigation.”59 Robert Aunger, a biological anthropologist,
although he does not reject the concept of memes outright, likewise asserts that “many researchers
blithely discuss features of memes, ignoring the fact that their existence has yet to be proven.”60 In

53
Blackmore, 62.
54
Kronfeldner, “Is Cultural Evolution Lamarckian?,” 503. Alister McGrath also makes this point about intentionality
and human choice, specifically in reference to memes, in Alister E. McGrath, Dawkins’ God: From The Selfish Gene to
The God Delusion (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 123.
55
Richard Barbrook, “Memesis Critique,” in A Memetics Compendium, ed. Robert Finkelstein (Adelphi: Robotic
Technology Inc, 2008), 95, https://semioticon.com/virtuals/memes2/memetics_compendium.pdf.
56
Richard Barbrook, “Never Mind the Cyberbollocks... Part 4: The Fallacies of Memetics,” Hypermedia Research
Centre, n.d., http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/hrc/theory/cyberbollocks/nevermind/t.2.1%5B3%5D.html.
57
Onar Aam, “Critique and Defense of Memesis,” in A Memetics Compendium, ed. Robert Finkelstein (Adelphi:
Robotic Technology Inc, 2008), 58, https://semioticon.com/virtuals/memes2/memetics_compendium.pdf.
58
Alister E. McGrath, “The Spell of the Meme” (University speech, March 13, 2006), 7,
http://www.cis.org.uk/upload/Resources/Atheism/mcgrath_rsa_lecture.pdf.
59
McGrath, Dawkins’ God, 131.
60
Robert Aunger, “Introduction,” in Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, ed. Robert Aunger, 1
edition (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7,
http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/15423/1/Aunger%20Cha%201%20DarwinizingCulture.pdf.
16
response to these criticisms, Blackmore admits that while it may be difficult to pin down just what is
copied, it is clear that cultural transmission means something has been copied. Memes exist, says
Blackmore, because imitation takes place.61 The semioticists and linguists Thomas Sebeok and
Marcel Danesi, who heavily criticize memetics, insist that “there is no empirical way to verify the
reality of memes, as defined by Dawkins; they can only be talked about as if they existed.”62 However,
they then state that “it is possible to study the structure of mind in the structure of models [.]”63

“Thought Contagion”
A third major point of contention is the “thought contagion” or “viruses of the mind”
metaphors which Dennett and Dawkins have colorfully touted. They liken supposedly non-rational
memes, particularly religious memes, to viruses, replicators copying themselves to the detriment of
the host. While science also consists of numerous memes, Dawkins distinguishes it from religion,
arguing that “Scientific ideas, like all memes, are subject to a kind of natural selection, and this might
look superficially virus-like. But the selective forces that scrutinize scientific ideas are not arbitrary
or capricious. They are exacting, well-honed rules, and they do not favour pointless self-serving
behaviour.”64 McGrath counters that this argument is special pleading, that all dogmas must face the
same standard.65 He further contends that religion is demonstrated to have a beneficial effect on the
human experience, an argument with which the reviewer Christopher Hartney concurs.66
The criticisms of the “thought contagion” model extend beyond the alleged double-standards
applied to religion. While the “thought contagion” metaphor borrows from the “social contagion”
model used in sociology and social psychology to describe collective human behavior which spreads
rapidly as if it was infectious, the bioinformaticist Derek Gatherer contends that such a connection is
misplaced because beliefs, unlike behavior, cannot be verifiably confirmed to reliably replicate
themselves, and because the entire concept of meme-host duality (that is, an identifiable division
between a specific meme and the host mind) is highly suspect.67 This latter point is one that is also

61
Blackmore, “Memetics Does Provide a Useful Way of Understanding Cultural Evolution.,” 257.
62
Thomas Albert Sebeok and Marcel Danesi, The Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 164.
63
Sebeok and Danesi, 164. Though Seboek and Danesi support Dawkins in that memes do not need to be empirically
verifiable as objects but rather can be studied as models, they find the “meme” concept to be redundant because of the
existing field of semiotics. See the sub-section “Memetics from a Semiotic Perspective” further down in this chapter for
more discussion on the subject.
64
Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co,
2003), 145.
65
McGrath, Dawkins’ God, 126; McGrath, “The Spell of the Meme,” 8–9; Christopher Hartney, “Dawkins’ God:
Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life by Alister McGrath,” Journal of Religious History 37, no. 4 (2013): 600–601,
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9809.12128.
66
McGrath, Dawkins’ God, 141; Hartney, “Alister McGrath,” 600.
67
Gatherer, “Why the ‘Thought Contagion’ Metaphor Is Retarding the Progress of Memetics.” Some academics
challenge the social contagion model within sociology, even though it is the predominant model. See Amir Goldberg
17
emphasized by Blackmore and the psychologist Nick Rose, who argue that, despite the assertion by
Dawkins that the self can choose to reject memes, the entire concept of self results from complexes
of innumerable memes and genes.68 However, the psychologist Paul Marsden postulates that
memetics and social contagion theory are complementary and so he advocates for a fusion of the two.
He contends that social contagion theory could benefit from the theoretical framework of memetics,
and memetics would benefit from the body of evidence accumulated by the social contagion theory.69

Meme Genotypes and Phenotypes

Another frequently discussed topic is the comparison of memes and their expression with
genotypes and phenotypes. As mentioned in the previous section, Cloak likened the information in
people’s heads – the i-culture – to the genotype and the behaviors and technologies resulting from
those ideas – the m-culture – to the phenotype. Dawkins and Dennett agree with Cloak (although
Dawkins initially was hesitant) and argue that the meme is Cloak’s i-culture and Cloak’s m-culture
is the memetic phenotype. The neurobiologist Juan Delius concurs, stating that memes are “synaptic
patterns that code cultural traits.”70 He considers the transmission of memes to be the transmission of
information in the form of synaptic patterns in one brain to another, with these patterns then
instructing cultural behavior.71 Gabora likewise treats memes as genotypic mental representations,
with the implementation of the mental representations analogous to phenotype.72
Yet the literary theorist and scholar of cultural evolution William Benzon identifies the
physical expressions of culture – “the pots and knives, the looms and cured hides, the utterances and
written words, the ploughshares and transistors, the songs and painted images, the tents and stone
fortifications, the dances and sculpted figures, all of it” – as the memetic genotype, and the “ideas,
desires, emotions, and attitudes behind these things,” the “mental objects and processes,” as the

and Sarah K. Stein, “Beyond Social Contagion: Associative Diffusion and the Emergence of Cultural Variation,”
American Sociological Review 83, no. 5 (October 1, 2018): 897–932, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418797576.
68
Blackmore, The Meme Machine, 2000, 219–34; Rose, “Controversies in Meme Theory.” However, Blackmore,
unlike Gatherer, still retains the “virus of the mind” metaphor as potentially useful, including as a potential distinction
between harmful and useless memes from beneficial memes. Blackmore, The Meme Machine, 2000, 19–22, 110.
69
Paul Marsden, “Memetics and Social Contagion: Two Sides of the Same Coin?,” Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary
Models of Information Transmission 2, no. 2 (1998), http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1998/vol2/marsden_p.html.
70
Juan Delius, “The Nature of Culture,” in The Tinbergen Legacy, ed. Marian Stamp Dawkins, Richard Dawkins, and
T. R. Halliday (London: Springer Science & Business Media, 1991), 83,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226916445_The_nature_of_culture.
71
Juan Delius, “Of Mind Memes and Brain Bugs: A Natural History of Culture.,” in The Nature of Culture:
Proceedings of the International and Interdisciplinary Symposium, October 7-11, 1986 in Bochum, ed. Walter A. Koch
(The Nature of Culture: The International and Interdisciplinary Symposium, October 7-11, 1986 in Bochum, Bochum:
Studienverlag N. Brockmeyer, 1989), 44–45,
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2fcc/8c9a21976be56e5d36bfa2ebd9bced61a8b4.pdf.
72
Gabora, “The Origin and Evolution of Culture and Creativity.”
18
memetic phenotypes.73 Gatherer echoes Benzon by identifying memes as an observable “behaviour,
artefact or an objective piece of information, which is copied, imitated or learned, and thus may
replicate within a cultural system,” but denies that memetics can apply to ideas at all.74 Gatherer states
that “belief is not transmissible, but is something that happens after the transmission of information.
While we can often observe the communication of information, we can never directly observe
transmission of belief. Information and belief are not the same kind of thing [emphasis in original].”75
Kronfelder makes a more complicated argument – the information is the genotype, the resulting
product the phenotype, and memes are never directly transmitted but rather their phenotypic
expressions.76
Blackmore is non-committal to either proposal – the memetic genotype being the mental
information, or the physical expressions and materials. She opines that “I think none of them really
works because they have not appreciated the difference between the copying-the-product and
copying-the-instructions.”77

Memes as Replicators
Some scholars go further and argue that most cultural transmission is not memetic at all
because it is not truly replicated. The social and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber acknowledges that
although some true memes exist – chain letters being an excellent example –, they are not nearly as
common as Dawkins and others claim.78 Sperber argues “that most cultural items are ‘re-produced’
in the sense that they are produced again and again – with, of course, a causal link between all these
productions –, but are not reproduced in the sense of being copied from one another.”79 Sperber cites
the “Chinese junk” illustration given by Dawkins. Two groups of children are asked to re-create a
Chinese junk. In the first group, a child is shown a picture of the junk and then asked to draw it,
without instruction in the specific strokes needed. The next child must copy the drawing of the first
child, and so on. In the second group, the child is shown an origami junk and instructed in how to re-
create it. They then pass these instructions to the next child, that child to the next, and so on. Dawkins
contends that the resulting products in the latter group will suffer from far less mutation than in the
former, because in the latter group the “ideal” Chinese junk is much more faithfully preserved. If

73
William Benzon, “Culture as an Evolutionary Arena,” Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 19, no. 4 (January
1, 1996): 322–23, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1061-7361(96)90003-X.
74
Gatherer, “Why the ‘Thought Contagion’ Metaphor Is Retarding the Progress of Memetics.”
75
Gatherer.
76
Kronfeldner, “Is Cultural Evolution Lamarckian?,” 506.
77
Blackmore, The Meme Machine, 2000, 64.
78
Dan Sperber, “An Objection to the Memetic Approach to Culture,” in Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics
as a Science, ed. Robert Aunger, 1st ed. (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 163,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245349514_An_objection_to_the_memetic_approach_to_culture.
79
Sperber, 164.
19