Memetics

Memetics, the study of memes, remains a controversial field among many scientists and skeptics. Memetics originated when Richard Dawkins reduced the process of biological genetic evolution to its most fundamental unit: the replicator (or gene). Dawkins, in a search for parallels and other things that he might classify as replicators, suggested that the information and ideas in brains — culture, for example — could function as replicators as well. Computer software may represent another form of replicator with which evolution may eventually build grand things, whether socially as in the open source movement, or through the use of evolutionary algorithms.

Memetics offers maximum explanatory value in cases where one cannot demonstrate the truth of the contents of the meme. For example, one can readily show that washing hands helps to prevent illness, so the best explanation for the widespread popularity of this practice is that “it works”, though memetics still helps explain the rate of spread, and details such as why the practice of washing hands before surgery took so long to catch on. Memetics, however, excels in explaining the spread of certain value-judgements (“chastity is important”), preferences (“pork is repulsive”), superstitions (“black cats bring bad luck”) and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs (“'X' is the one true God”); since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena by conventional scientific methods. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a “meme”, therefore, does not constitute an insult, but dismissing it as “just a meme” does. Calling a belief a meme does not constitute an insult in that most people who believe in memes regard all beliefs as memes anyway. For example, an atheist who classified a given theist belief-system as a meme would likely also classify his own atheist belief-system as a meme.