Dan Sperber

An objection to the memetic approach to culture Memetics is one possible evolutionary approach to the study of culture. Boyd and Richerson's models (1985, Boyd this volume), or my epidemiology of representations (1985, 1996), are among other possible evolutionary approaches inspired in various ways by Darwin. The memetic approach is based on the claim that culture is made of memes. If one takes the notion of a meme in the strong sense intended by Richard Dawkins (1976, 1982), this is indeed an interesting and challenging claim. On the other hand, if one were to define "meme", as does the Oxford English Dictionary, as "an element of culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means," then the claim that culture is made of memes would be a mere rewording of a most common idea: anthropologists have always considered culture as that which is transmitted in a human group by non-genetic means. Richard Dawkins defines "memes" as cultural replicators propagated through imitation, undergoing a process of selection, and standing to be selected not because they benefit their human carriers, but because of they benefit themselves. Are non-biological replicators such as memes theoretically possible? Yes, surely. The very idea of non-biological replicators, and the argument that the Darwinian model of selection is not limited to the strictly biological are already, by themselves, of theoretical interest. This would be so even if, actually, there were no memes. Anyhow, there are clear cases of actual memes, though much fewer than is often thought. Chain-letters, for instance, fit the definition. The very content of these letters, with threats to those who ignore them and promises to those who copy and send them, contributes to their being copied and sent again and again. Chain-letters don't benefit the people who copy them, they benefit their own propagation. Moreover, some chain-letters are doing better than others because of the greater effectiveness of their content in causing replication. Once the general idea of a meme is understood – and especially if it understood fairly loosely –, it is all too easy to see human social life as teeming with memes. Aren't, for instance, religious ideas, with their threats of hell for unbelievers and promises of paradise for the proselytes, comparable to chain-letters, and in fact much more effective in benefiting their