These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival. Balkin maintains that the same structures used to generate ideas about free speech or free markets also serve to generate racistic beliefs. This view regards memetics as a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors. [38], British political philosopher John Gray has characterized Dawkins's memetic theory of religion as "nonsense" and "not even a theory... the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors", comparable to Intelligent Design in its value as a science. He contrasts memes to patterns and true knowledge, characterizing memes as "greatly simplified versions of patterns" and as "unreasoned matching to some visual or mnemonic prototype. Controls tended to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (for example: "Go with the flow" or "Everyone should have equal opportunity"). Lynch asserts that belief in the Crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity amplifies each of its other replication advantages through the indebtedness believers have to their Savior for sacrifice on the cross.
Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts. [36] Theistic memes discussed include the "prohibition of aberrant sexual practices such as incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and religious prostitution", which may have increased vertical transmission of the parent religious memeplex. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. "[8] Blackmore meets such criticism by stating that memes compare with genes in this respect: that while a gene has no particular size, nor can we ascribe every phenotypic feature directly to a particular gene, it has value because it encapsulates that key unit of inherited expression subject to evolutionary pressures. [46], Prominent researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, including Scott Atran, Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer, John Tooby and others, argue the possibility of incompatibility between modularity of mind and memetics. Moritz, Elan. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs. [56], In 2013, Richard Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as one deliberately altered by human creativity, distinguished from Dawkins's original idea involving mutation "by random change and a form of Darwinian selection. [43], Opinions differ as to how best to apply the concept of memes within a "proper" disciplinary framework. "Is a cultural ethology possible? Memes play a comparable role in understanding the evolution of imitated behaviors. Many of the features common to the most widely practiced religions provide built-in advantages in an evolutionary context, she writes. To illustrate, she notes evolution selects for the gene for features such as eye color; it does not select for the individual nucleotide in a strand of DNA. With Tenor, maker of GIF Keyboard, add popular Oh Say Less animated GIFs to your conversations. Derived from "say no more".
Richard Dawkins called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow. Similar memes are thereby included in the majority of religious memeplexes, and harden over time; they become an "inviolable canon" or set of dogmas, eventually finding their way into secular law. Clusters of memes, or memeplexes (also known as meme complexes or as memecomplexes), such as cultural or political doctrines and systems, may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes.
They have tried to look for 'biological advantages' in various attributes of human civilization. In keeping with the thesis that in evolution one can regard organisms simply as suitable "hosts" for reproducing genes, Dawkins argues that one can view people as "hosts" for replicating memes.
People with autism showed a significant tendency to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (for example: "Don't cut flowers before they bloom").
The best GIFs are on GIPHY.
The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid-1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme.
[clarification needed], Fracchia and Lewontin regard memetics as reductionist and inadequate. Memes! "Cultural microevolution. Memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas. For instance, tribal religion has been seen as a mechanism for solidifying group identity, valuable for a pack-hunting species whose individuals rely on cooperation to catch large and fast prey. [25], Aaron Lynch attributed the robustness of religious memes in human culture to the fact that such memes incorporate multiple modes of meme transmission.
Find the newest in Reaction GIFs, Emotion GIFs, Action GIFs and more. For example, religions that preach of the value of faith over evidence from everyday experience or reason inoculate societies against many of the most basic tools people commonly use to evaluate their ideas.
Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. "[57], This article is about the term "meme" in general. The promise of heaven to believers and threat of hell to non-believers provide a strong incentive for members to retain their belief. info)) form a meme widely replicated as an independent unit, one can regard the entire symphony as a single meme as well. As a factual criticism, Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a "code script" for memes (analogous to the DNA of genes), and to the excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism (that of an idea going from one brain to another), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation rate, rendering the evolutionary process chaotic.
They lack connection and meaning, thereby preventing "the creation of true connections necessary to our understanding of the world."
Many religions feature adversarial elements, punishing apostasy, for instance, or demonizing infidels.
An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects", "Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science: Evolution of Culture, Memetics", Dawkins's speech on the 30th anniversary of the publication of, "Evolution and Memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device", Richard Dawkins explains the real meaning of the word 'meme', The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meme&oldid=980715535, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Short description is different from Wikidata, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2020, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles needing additional references from August 2020, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from February 2009, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2010, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Cultural memes will have the characteristic of Lamarckian inheritance when a host aspires to replicate the given meme through inference rather than by exactly copying it. In Thought Contagion Lynch identifies the memes of transmission in Christianity as especially powerful in scope.
[37], Luis Benitez-Bribiesca M.D., a critic of memetics, calls the theory a "pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution". An element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. The best GIFs are on GIPHY. ), This page was last edited on 28 September 2020, at 01:09. "[54] He lists various architectural memes that circulated since the 1920s and which, in his view, have led to contemporary architecture becoming quite decoupled from human needs.
His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives, social networks, metaphoric and metonymic models, and a variety of different mental structures. [25], Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981) by Charles J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson proposes the theory that genes and culture co-evolve, and that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic memory.