Genes, cultures, and the human prospect ehrlich, paul r. However, the central question of why it took these populations. Genes, memes, culture, and the individual, we discuss and integrate the basic concepts of genetics, evolution, and. The study of memes is important because political humor has two major social functions nilsen, 1990. Memetics describes how an idea can propagate successfully, but doesnt necessarily imply a concept is factual. Throughout his writings, dawkins has developed the rhetoric of a gene s eye. The precise thornbush shape of a protein molecule such as hemoglobin is stable in the sense that two chains consisting of the same sequences of amino acids will tend, like two springs, to come to rest in. Darwinian archeology and cultural evolution, thames and hutson ltd, london 2002, isbn 0500051186. Examines culture as a carrier and supplier of memes to the individual. The longer a meme stays in its hosts, the higher its chances of propagation. Project muse genes, memes, and the chinese concept of.
Genes, memes, and the evolution of human leadership. Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution, by stephen shennan, 2002. Treating memes like genes tells us which are likely to spread. Memes are hypothetical cultural units passed on by imitation. Review genes, memes and human history by stephen shennan london. Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. It is tempting to consider memes as simply ideas, but more. War, memes and memeplexes international affairs oxford. For though humans are now both cultural and ecological beings, it was not always so. Dawkins god genes, memes, and the meaning of life, blackwell publishing 2005, p16. The chinese notion of wen is an untranslatable term meaning pattern, structure, writing, and literature. Genes, memes, culture, and mental illness toward an. Memetics is a theory for interpreting cultural evolution.
Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution 2002, and john robb and marciaanne dobress edited volume agency in archaeology 2000. Richard dawkins could never have predicted that his idea of memes would be mass adopted for the internet age. Memes, analogously to genes, vary in their aptitude to replicate. Thus memes that prove more effective at replicating and surviving are selected in the meme pool. Contentsshow example of humanist morality the set below is based on the golden rule, we generally shouldnt do things we wouldnt want others to do to us. Ever since, the study of memes memetics has strived to attain a scientific status. Modes of cultural transmission are, by analogy with modes of genetic transmission, ways in which cultural information is transmitted between individuals. Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution find, read and cite all the research you need on.
In general, it is proposed that taking the memes eye view will give as dramatic a transformation in the understanding of human nature as taking the genes eye view has. Its been fortytwo years since dawkins gave birth to the idea of a meme as a cultural gene. Genes culture and human evolution download ebook pdf. Volume 19 issue 2 april 2004 genes, memes and human history. Dean hamer makes it quite clear, that this book is not an argument that god does or does not exist. Birth of the worlds first genetically modified human babies, took place. Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution find, read and cite all. Critics contend the theory is untested, unsupported or incorrect. We show that the dynamics of intelligence has three distinct phases. Humanist morality focuses on improving conditions for ourselves, our families, our communities the whole of humanity. Analysis of facebook meme groups used during the 2016 us. We here aim at such detailed comparison and show that the.
There is a ton of great information in the selfish gene. Genes, memes and human history pages 249257 authors. Richard dawkins is one of the bestselling popular science writers. Archaeology, of all the human sciences, can dodge this problem the least, and the great virtue of shennans genes, memes and human history is that he confronts it directly. Despite its importance across the behavioral sciences and for theories of cultural evolution, no attempts have been made, to our knowledge, to critically analyze this analogy. The meme first appeared in richard dawkins first book, the selfish gene 1976, and was an attempt to understand why some behaviours, from an evolutionary perspective, seemed to make no sense but, somehow or other, were found to be very common in human societies. I distinguish three mechanisms of cultural evolution. This chapter employs an interpretation of human evolution to argue that leadership is collectively and misleadingly used, and then provides the word leadership with a more precise meaning. Use of genetic mutants fru fruitless mutant males show intense headtohead interactions. Human nature canbe explained by evolutionary theory, but only when we consider evolving memes as well as genes.
Memetics is the study of information and culture based on an analogy with darwinian evolution. Memes began driving genes to generate a brain that was especially good at replicating those memes. The god gene is an interesting survey of the evidence that spirituality is hardwired in our genetic makeup. This paper on the role of memes in cultural evolution is divided into eight sections on the reception of memetics, the evolutionary gene, the related puzzle of sex and recombination, the role of language in cultural evolution, the scientific usefulness of the meme concept, alternative terms in evolutionary social sciences, memes and. Memes, invented to suggest a strong analogy with genes, are ideas that spread through human cultures and across the generations. Request pdf on jan 1, 2002, stephen shennan and others published genes, memes, and human history. Review of stephen shennan genes, memes, and human history. A critical reappraisal by kate distin and not by genes alone. Wen huagenerally translated as culturesignifies the process through which one adopts wen. The genetics of behavior the university of arizona. Biology, ideology and human nature is a 1984 book by the evolutionary geneticist richard lewontin, the neurobiologist steven rose, and the psychologist leon kamin, in which the authors criticize sociobiology and genetic determinism and advocate a socialist society the book formed part of a larger campaign against sociobiology. Shes exploring the existence of a new class of meme, spread by human technology.
Recent research has provided increasing support for the origins of anatomically and genetically modern human populations in africa between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, followed by a major dispersal of these populations to both asia and europe sometime after ca. How culture transformed human evolution, by peter j. Russell believes that memes are as important as genes in the process of coevolution, because memes affected how greyhounds were perceived, valued, and selected. Click download or read online button to get genes culture and human evolution book now. As the definition of a meme has evolved, does it still make sense to think of them as the. The first ever human clone was successfully developed at the advanced cell technologies, usa. The theory starts only with one simple mechanism the competition between memes to get into human brains and be passed on again. To overcome this theoretical divide it is necessary to revive the theoretical debate, based upon epistemological principles relevant to archaeology as a. Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution 01 by stephen shennan isbn. Even if youve slept all the way through biology class in high school, this book can catch you up on at least 70% of whats important within a few hours. Thats about a million lifetimes for internet memes. However, he has said in at least 1 interview that the internet is an ideal ecology for the spread of memes, so its no surprise that the. Susan blackmore is dedicated to understanding the scientific nature of consciousness. Dawkins god genes, memes, and the meaning of life by.
Outlines the roles of genes and memes in the evolution of the human brain. Her latest work centers on the existence of memes little bits of knowledge, lore, habit that seem to spread themselves using human brains as mere carriers. In the model, genes control brains which invent and learn strategies memes which are used by males to gain advantage in competition for mates. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation 1. Those who write on this topic should also read either the rest of shennan or another book on evolutionary archaeology e. Memes shape peoples behaviors around values, ideas, and choices. Review genes, memes and human history universal darwinism. Competition between memes and genes different mechanisms of evolution though memetic and genetic evolution are subjected to the same basic principles of blind variation and natural selection on the basis of fitness, memetic evolution is basically a much more flexible mechanism.
Memes are stories, songs, habits, skills, inventions and ways of doing things that we copy from person to person by imitation. Elucidates the creation, storage, and evolution of memes within individual brains. Our world is a place where information can behave like human genes and ideas can replicate, mutate and evolve. The chinese concept of wen is examined here in the context of contemporary gene theory and the cultural branch of gene theory called memetics. Memes frequently include an image along with a slogans, catchphrases, fashion, learned skills, and so on. Mcgrath is one of the worlds leading theologians, with a doctorate in the sciences. Dawkins saw the gene as a metaphor for the meme much like genes, which are ubiquitous and essential to evolution. Cognitive study of multimodular human minds undermines memetics.
As dawkins emphasised, natural selection is a ruthless judge of its. In addition, it clarifies the implications of the memetic driving hypothesis. Why did modern human populations disperse from africa ca. They are steve shennans genes, memes and human history. One of the most persistent memes is honour, and another is revenge for dishonour imagined or real. Behavioral traits are based on memes, instructions for behavior that are a societys written and unwritten rules 11. The problem perhaps the most critical problem facing the human sciences is that of integrating two conceptions of human activity. First true human clones were developed at the seoul national university in south korea. The lingering naturenurture problem is just one expression of this unresolved tension. Genes can only be transmitted from parents or parent in the case of asexual reproduction to offspring. Memes also persist because they flourish in the presence of other memes such as religion in what dawkins calls memeplexes. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
In this paper, i argue that the adaptive fit between human cultures and their environment is persuasive evidence that some form of evolutionary mechanism has been important in driving human cultural change. The complexities of human behavior nondarwinian heritability language culture memes genetics and animal behavior the evolution of adaptive behavior how do genes influence behavior. Evolutionary processes empower the brains of species with similar adaptations needed for their survival and reproduction. My aim in this book is to show that many aspects of human nature are explained far better by a theory of memetics than by any rival theory yet available.
1563 961 400 632 1587 374 401 710 406 78 1287 924 494 1641 25 138 892 430 1692 805 1524 1174 1334 470 46 1406 497 1487 1139 498 1064 1373 1322 126