Natural and uman sciences

“Memetics” and cultural transmission In 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene. A meme is a “unit of culture”

(an idea, belief or behaviour). In his book, Dawkins likens the cultural transmission of ideas to the biological transmission of genes—so memetics is the cultural equivalent of genetics in biology. In Dawkins’ words,

“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” [or learning]

(Dawkins, 2006, p 192).

The interesting part about memes is that it does not matter whether the ideas or beliefs are true, a meme simply has to be benecial to its host culture. According to Dawkins, one of the most successful memes is what he calls the God meme or religious practices. It does not matter whether God is real or whether any single religion has monopoly on the truth because the idea of God and religion have great psychological advantages to the members of a group whether or not it is true. In this way, the God meme has survived for millennia. Memetics is very controversial and is considered a pseudoscience by its detractors

(Kantorovich, 2014).

Do you accept this analogy between genetics and memetics? What makes you say that?