Transcript MEMES: HOW DO FASHIONS START?

MEMES: HOW DO
FASHIONS START?
PROFESSOR RICHARD
DAWKINS
 Richard Dawkins is a biologist and
formerly
Professor
of
the
Public
Understanding of Science at Oxford
University
 He has written extensively about genetics,
most famously in his book ‘The Selfish
Gene’
 BUT he has also been interested in why
some social behaviour such as ‘fashions’
get passed on when others do not
Student Activity
 One example of a fashion is people
wearing their baseball caps backwards?
 Think of FIVE other current fashions.
FASHIONS AND FADS
 Why did people start
wearing their baseball
caps backwards?
 Why do they now wear
them the right way
round or sideways?
 Why do terms such as
‘wannabee’, ‘spindoctor’ or ‘dumbing
down’ suddenly enter
the language?
 Why do people speak
like their parents?
 Why do tunes or catch
phrases ‘catch on’?
 Why does religion get
accepted by so many
people?
 Why do these things
survive and other ideas
drop by the wayside?
GENES AND MEMES
 Dawkins says that the
genes which shape what
we inherit are ‘selfish’ in
the sense that their only
interest is their own
replication.
 They want to be passed
on to the next
generation
 Some genes do not get
replicated, hence
evolution
 It is not so much that
‘genes want x’ but
‘genes that do x are
more likely to be passed
on’
 Dawkins applies this to
elements of culture and
asks why some ideas
get passed on and
others don’t
HOW DO MEMES WORK?
 A meme is: ‘A selfreplicating element of
culture, passed on by
imitation’ eg ideas,
behaviour, stories,
fashions, songs,
customs, beliefs
 Memes, like genes,
compete for space in
brains, books, TV and
the internet for their
own selfish survival
...1
 Because humans have
the ability to imitate
behaviour, memes travel
down generations but
also between people at
a particular time
 Our culture is based on
competition between
ideas: some survive
some do not
HOW DO MEMES WORK?
 Ideas spread if they are
effective memes.
 Perhaps they appeal to
our sense of danger, or
to our appetites: food or
hunger, and to what is
‘cool’ at the time
...2
 Copying of memes is
imperfect and there are
far more mutations than
you would get with
genes eg forgetting the
words of a song
 Our ideas are not our
own creation. We are
hosts for memes which
survive in the
competition to catch our
attention
IMPLICATIONS
 Helps us understand the
evolution of the brain
and the ideas in it
 Helps understand origins
of language
 Helps us understand
specific things like the
evolution of the internet
in terms of which bits of
it ‘take off’ and which
bits do not
 Helps us understand how
cultures and lifestyles
develop
 Raises big questions
about how our identity is
formed
CRITICISMS
 Difficult to pin down
exactly what a meme is
 It is a rather vague
concept
 Memes are transmitted
at a very weak level
compared to genetic
inheritance
 We do not know what
memes are made of or
where they reside
 How ‘big’ is a meme? Is
a whole religion a meme
or are we mean smaller
ideas and concepts?
 What ARE the factors
which get some memes
passed on and not
others? Needs more
investigation
 Not yet a fully worked
out theory
Try reading more about Dawkins
and his book ‘The Selfish Gene’
Richard Dawkins