THE MEME-GENE ANALOGY AND THE SELECTIVE CONTEXT

Dawkins' meme-gene analogy ( 1976 ; 1989 , 1993a ) uses replicators, replication, and a replicator pool as cornerstones. Gene- and memepool being examples of replicator pools, and genes and memes being replicators. What is to be explained in the analogy is why and/or how (by what mechanisms or processes) certain replicators spread better through a pool than others, and thus change the (content of a) pool.

Replicators and pools are almost always situated in a biological selective context. When questions as posed above are phrased in biology, like why does a specific gene spread through a population, most questions are explained with the use of the evolutionary concepts of variation, selection and reproduction (or replication, which is replication of genes connected to the event where an organism produces new organisms). The selective context assumes that central entities in evolutionary biology, genes, organisms and species, are, each at their own level, in a constant competition for survival.
A short observation that is characteristic of how the spread of genes through a genepool is generally explained can show this. In biology the genepool 'belongs to' a species (or lineage; genealogical line of reproducing organisms). In the common view, genes that result in unfit organisms die along with the organisms they are in, resulting in the spread of fitter genes through the genepool (by reproduction). Note that this logic will only work if there are unfit organisms, else all variation will stay in existence. This means that there must be a selection pressure in view of which organisms are fit or unfit. It also means that there must be variation in genes to select upon, and therefore a process that produces this variation.
The explanation thus uses the concepts of natural selection: variation, reproduction and selection (or in more general terms, replication, interaction and lineage, see endnote 1 ).
Because an analogy is assumed between memetic selective evolution and genetic selective evolution, the for genetic evolution necessary assumption of survival context is also applicable to memetic selective evolution. next part

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