Memetics: An Evolutionary Theory of Cultural Transmission - Essay Example

number Article analysis Introduction Richard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, describes living things such as humans as good examples of platforms for the transmission of genetic information they bear. In addition, he refers to genes as vessels of information replicators that produce exact copies of themselves in order to survive from generation to generation. In order to preserve this continuity, the replicators play the most significant role to ensure evolution carries on. Dawkins opposes Darwinian’s illustration of how human behavior is related to genetic terms and suggests that there is a unit referred to as a meme responsible for cultural transmission. A Meme plays the same role as genes and depends on imitation to produce copies of them. In his book, Dawkins states that some of the examples of memes include catch phrases, ideas, and methods of making arches or pots, tunes and clothe fashions among others (Alvarez 24). Memes make use of the process of imitation to leap from brain to brain within the meme pool, a process similar to how genes leap from body to body within the gene pool through eggs or sperms. The core aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the meme has the ability to influence the treatment of human culture and society through the study of the human being in order to bridge the gap that exists between natural and the social sciences as Alvarez describes in his piece of work. Discussion According to Alvarez, Dawkins provides two versions of definition for memes. Darwinism argument even sheds more light into its reason for existence, and other theorists’ perception towards memetics. In the version referred to as Dawkins A, a meme is a unit of imitation that leads to cultural transmission. In the version of Dawkins B, he defines a meme as a unit of information that stays in the brain. He further claims that it has the feature of a definite structure and has ability to realize the physical medium used to store information in the brain. The evolutionary psychology and sociobiology aims to change cultural behaviors through biological determinants, a move that memetics differ with. Memetics acknowledges the existence of inheritance within the human species that occurs through both mechanism; the cultural and biological inheritance. Other scientific experts maintain that the genetic domain and the socio-cultural domain have to be illustrated independently. Furthermore, Dawkins discusses universal Darwinism that contains the evolutionary principles encompass both the socio-cultural and the genetic domain. Universal Darwinism uses the strategy of abstracting strange features in organisms and genes taking into account the roles of phenotypes and genotypes. Phenotype is defined as a physiological, behavioral, or morphological feature that an organism displays due to the interaction with the environment and its genotype. On the other hand, genotype consists of genes present in an organism. Using this perspective, evolution is seen to take place in two possible processes; ecological interaction and replication (Alvarez 24). According to Alvarez, Ecological interaction is the association or relationship that exists between an organism and its environment. Replication, on the other hand, is the process where genes are transferred through copying through generations while making sure that the successive generations are alike. They should be alike in order to allow cumulative selection to happen. Ecological interaction biases the process of replication by making sure that the differences, which exist between successive generations, have the capacity to allow mutation to happen. This is the main reason why Dawkins term organisms as vehicles that house genes and the location of phenotypic effects. This makes replication the key significance of the genotypic makeup of an organism. The Darwinian principles are hence considered easier to explain the evolutionary process (Alvarez 25). The reason we have Darwinian evolutionary theory being applied in culture explanation, as written by Alvarez, is its ability to bridge the gap that exist between the social and natural sciences. Human behavior is regarded as the fruit of the interaction of the natural environment and the evolved psychological and physiological variables. This means that the human culture is determined by biological means through the species’ evolutionary history. From the evolutionary point of view, the evolutionary psychologists and socio-biologists believe that behaviors, that are common, are the consequence of the clash between instincts that date back to the Stone Age with our current technological environment and human brains. Alvarez claims that, reductionists believe that the evolutionary psychologists and socio-biologists counter the cultural selections approach that suggests the form of inheritance has a dual system within the human species. This dual system consists of the cultural transmission and genetic transmission. The whole approach is regarded as the gene-cultural coevolution. Memetics have links with cultural selectionism but differ when it comes to the mainstream co evolutionism. They differ from cultural selectionism on the ground that it insists that replication is one of the mechanisms associated with cultural inheritance. Since cultural units are said to be replicated as genes, there lies an assumption that definable units have the ability to distinguish themselves within a culture. Anthropologists have come out clear to criticize the memetic stance claiming that culture is composed of a continuum and there is the possibility of any unit within it becoming an arbitrary construct of the observer (Alvarez 25-26). On the other hand, the idea by memeticists that cultural inheritance only occurs through replication has faced criticism since replication has no links to cultural transmission. Another argument claims that the evolutionary feature of cultural transmission is not determined by an inheritance mechanism but rather depends on replication. There are suggestions that cultural transmission may be as a result of cognitive mechanisms features of the human species. The conclusion drawn from that standpoint is that memes replicate. In addition, memetics and cultural selectionism differ since the latter holds that there is a possibility of cultural transmission being a product of non-genetic transmission. Concisely, it suggests that there is a likelihood of classical conditioning, direct instruction, imprinting, observation imitation, and operative conditioning. The main reason why imitation is emphasized in cultural transmission is that it stands to be the only means of transmission that has the ability to accumulate modifications through generations. In some way, this makes imitation seem like a distinguishing character of the human species. Memetic drive is credited for the development of the humankind imitation capacity that provides answers to odd phenomena that are strange to the human species. Such include speech, non-altruistic acts, and hypertrophied brain among others (Alvarez 27). Alvarez asserts that memetics, also be referred to as the branch of mentalist or idealist technological artefacts appear to have semantic phenotypic expression of mentifacts or what is referred to as the syntactic mental entities. The main constituents of mentifacts are the genotypes that give rise to artefactual phenotypes through interaction with the environment. According to several critics, this suggestion has a serious limitation. Genetic and memetic transmissions have several underlying differences. Biologically, genes are transmitted on a one-way basis to the children from their parents but memes can be transmitted horizontally (Alvarez 26-27). This means that memes can be transmitted from the offspring to the parent. In addition, genes specify behaviors and structure of human species, which happens during development. During this process of inheritance, the genotype is transmitted and the phenotype dies. On the other hand, the transmission of a meme follows a different route. Since a meme is a phenotype, the genotype plays the role of specifying it. The entire memetic enterprise forms its basis within the extension of genetic model to the cultural domain (Alvarez 28). There is evidence that memes form a heterogeneous class of entities as one of its constituents. This makes it simpler and fast to carry out the empirical research since it entails comprising the artefacts and behaviors that are easily observable. The real memetic units referred to as the genotypic memes be identified with artifacts because of their availability for empirical study and the process of quantification. For a replicator to be termed as successful, Dawkins suggests that it has to have three major features; fecundity, longevity and copying-fidelity. For a replicator to maintain its initial pattern after undergoing through series of several copying, it has to be to observe copying fidelity. For a replicator to spread at a higher speed, it has to ensure that it maintains a faster rate of copying; fecundity. For more copies to be made, the replicator has to ensure that the replicating pattern survives longer. Conclusion In conclusion, Alvarez outlines three dilemmas face the memetic science. The first dilemma is if a culture can be viewed as a composition of information units that are transmitted independently. The second question seeks to ask whether replication can be used to explain how the units are transmitted. The last question tends to find out whether the selectionist or Darwinian approach is viable to illustrate the science of culture. The contrast between the neuromemetic, memotypic and phemotypic theories of technology is a modern form of behavioral and mentalist opposition that exist between the new cognitive and he traditional behaviorist psychology. A version of mentalism views artefacts as phemotypes. Neuromemetrics offers a clear illustration of memetic dynamics since they are in the form of memotypes and are lodged within the brain (Alvarez 28). However, this standpoint does not give an explanation for the phenotypic transmission that take place in the outer world. The externalist memetics and behavioral memetics do not take mental representations as significant since they do not have a non-verifiable character. Unarguably, the meme has the ability to influence the treatment of human culture and society through the study of human being in order to bridge the gap that exists between natural and the social sciences. Works Cited Álvarez, Asunción. "Memetics: An Evolutionary Theory of Cultural Transmission." SORITES Home Page. N.p., 15 Dec. 2004. Web. 21 Jan. 2015. 24-28. Read More