In “The Selfish Gene” evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins lays out the groundwork for what has become known as Memetics. Dawkins’ “meme,” a mixture of the words “gene” and “mime,” describes the function of ideas and how they are shared in human society. The “gene” part of the word “meme” makes the assumption that ideas propagate in a similar fashion to genes; copying, mutating, and becoming dominant or recessive.

While Dawkins’ idea delves more into anthropology than genetics, it leaves us with the question of whether or not memes actually do function similarly to genes.

First, we have to give ourselves a sense of how genes function when interacting with the world outside cells, tissue, organs, and body. Genes are effected by outward stimulus, often creating more common (dominant alleles) in one geographical area as opposed to another. Immunity to localized bacteria and viruses is probably one of the most commonly noted geographical factor of genetics. Genes may or may not be inwardly expressed. The majority of genes are inwardly expressed and have no defining phenotypes.

Memes are always outwardly expressed in human organisms, which makes them actually more akin to being like a phenotype more than being like a genotype. In fact, for a meme to be successful (dominant), it absolutely has to be expressed outwardly in culture to even have a possibility of copying the “allele.”

Now, often geographical location also effects culture and the exchange of ideas. Consider a town in a valley which has no communication with the outside world. The memes and culture of this area will wildly differ from those found elsewhere. When exposed to different culture, dominant memes may quickly become recessive while originally recessive memes may become a staple of local tourist culture.

So far, memes seem to have at least a foothold in genetics, but the question remains: what science do we have that proves this conjecture? What do we know about what makes a meme aesthetically pleasing and makes it re-create itself in culture. We exchange ideas in spoken word, written word, drawings, and a myriad of other ways. How do we define how each one is accepted as stimulus? We know that the cadence of speech can effect the acceptance of speech. The structure of language in an essay or a poem effects its intended audience. An experienced painter knows how to draw the eye to important parts of an artistic piece using color and lines. How do we define these scientifically?

While we have strong evidence as to how genes function, interact, copy, and change, we have little to no evidence as to how ideas do the same in a cultural environment.

I fail to be able find any relevant scientific studies which actually define the flow of cultural information mathematically. What I would like to be able to do is compile charts of waves of memetic influence and compare those to charts of waves of genetic influence. That is just one idea of how to compile and compare the information, but I would like to be able to do more solid research on this subject.

Maybe I just don’t have enough background in Neuroscience. Is there a neuroscientist in the house?