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“Meme Wars”: A Brief Overview of Memetics and Some Essential Context

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Memetics and Evolutionary Economics

Part of the book series: Economic Complexity and Evolution ((ECAE))

  • The original version of this chapter was revised: The word “muchlonger” in page 15 was corrected as “much longer” and the word “several doctoraldissertations” in page 17 was corrected as “several doctoral dissertations”. The correction to this chapter is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59955-3_9

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of memetics, starting with relevant terminology and examples of applications of memetics in other disciplines in Sect. 2.1. Section 2.2 highlights important contributions as well as cornerstones of the so-called “meme’s eye view”. Section 2.3 turns to some of the controversies in meme theory before Sects. 2.4–2.6 give an overview of the central notions of replicators, interactors, and memeplexes.

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Change history

  • 04 June 2021

    In the original version of the book, In Chapter 2, the word “muchlonger” in page 15 is now corrected as “much longer” and the word “several doctoraldissertations” in page 17 is now corrected as “several doctoral dissertations”. The chapter and book have been updated with the change.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Concise overviews and introductions to memetics can be found, for example, in Aunger (2007), Baraghith (2015, Chap. 2), Burman (2012), Heylighen and Chielens (2009), Jesiek (2003), Kronfeldner (2011, Chaps. 5–6), Mick (2019, Chap. 1), Patzelt (2015b), Salwiczek (2001), Stewart-Williams (2018, Chap. 6 and pp. 293–303), and von Bülow (2013a, b). For more general reviews of the literature on cultural evolution, see, for instance, Lewens (2019), Linquist (2010), Mesoudi (2007, 2015, 2017), or Reisman (2013).

  2. 2.

    Note that Dawkins has also contributed to the meme’s conceptual ambiguity by redefining memes as “units of information residing in a brain” in The Extended Phenotype (Dawkins 1982b, p. 109) and by likening memes to viruses (Dawkins 1993). Yet, to be fair, Dawkins’ introduction of the meme was never intended as a fully fledged theory of cultural evolution but to make the case that natural selection operates on replicators more generally, not “selfish genes” in particular (cf. Dawkins 1999, p. xvi). As Burman (2012, p. 77) puts it: “The original meme, in other words, was a rhetorical flourish intended to clarify a larger argument.”

  3. 3.

    See also Moritz (1990, pp. 6–8) on some of the philosophical roots of memetics.

  4. 4.

    See also Jahoda (2002) or Marsden (2000), for comments on other precursors and antecedents of memetics.

  5. 5.

    Note that this is the essence of the memetic take on creativity in any case (e.g., cf. Dennett 2017), as we will also briefly revisit in Sect. 7.2.

  6. 6.

    To take up the Oxford Dictionaries again, the second definition of a meme given there reads: “An image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations” (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/meme); see also Marwick (2013).

  7. 7.

    Some authors (e.g., Mérő 2009) even consider money itself to be a distinct replicator or another kind of meme (Westoby 1994, Sect. “Derivative memes”).

  8. 8.

    For an adaptationist alternative to Dennett’s memetic explanation, see, for example, Bulbulia (2008).

  9. 9.

    In fact, some authors speculate that the reluctance of many researchers to take up the term meme is due not only to its terminological ambiguity but also to its popularity in nonacademic circles (e.g., Knobloch 2015; Lord 2012).

  10. 10.

    On a related note, Lawson (2003) explains his hesitation to embrace memetics mainly with its reductionist “view that the replicator is the prime mover in all that happens” (p. 135, emphasis added).

  11. 11.

    Examples include but are not limited to Arthur (cf. 2009, p. 102), Binmore (1998), Herrmann-Pillath (2000, Chap. III; 2010, Chap. 3), and some chapters in Ziman (2000).

  12. 12.

    And instead of “parasitic memes” they simply use more magniloquent expressions like “maladaptive cultural variants” (e.g., Richerson and Boyd 2005, Chap. 5) or “maladaptive culturally transmitted traits” (e.g., Boyd 2018, p. 182).

  13. 13.

    In Dawkins (1982a), the differences between so-called germ-line and dead-end replicators as well as between active and passive replicators are explained, but we will not get caught up in these details, here. Moreover, it should be noted that according to Dawkins (2016), “successful” replicators exhibit three important characteristics: copying-fidelity, fecundity, and longevity (see also von Buelow 2013b, for a short review).

  14. 14.

    Recent overviews and introductions to the debate(s) about replicators in biology can, for example, be found in Godfrey-Smith (2000), Lloyd (2017), Wilkins and Bourrat (2019), and more extensively in Jablonka and Lamb (2014).

  15. 15.

    For example, see also Magne’s (2015, 2016) objection to Dennett’s informational approach to memes.

  16. 16.

    It should be noted, however, that Hull himself does not regard Dawkins’ vehicles and his interactors as perfectly equivalent concepts (cf. Hull 1988a, p. 31).

  17. 17.

    For example, Hull (1988a, p. 31) also writes: “On my account, genes are both replicators and interactors. If genes are anything, they are entities that interact with their environments in such a way as to bias their own replication.”

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Schlaile, M.P. (2021). “Meme Wars”: A Brief Overview of Memetics and Some Essential Context. In: Schlaile, M.P. (eds) Memetics and Evolutionary Economics. Economic Complexity and Evolution. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59955-3_2

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