This chapter talks about the science of culture as being a form of universal Darwinism--that is, that culture is subject to variation and evolves when certain variants are selected and preserved until another later variation. Culture is a creation of human minds, which learn associatively, therefore understanding culture requires a scientific understanding of how culture is spread. This is where memetics comes in. However, one problem is that there is no authoritative theory about the transfer of culture, so natural science is at somewhat of a loss.  The chapter goes into some detail about the relationship between the definition of culture and the science of culture. The less agreement in the science, the more important definitions become, otherwise everyone is essentially speaking a different language. For memetics, the definition of copying is particularly important.  How faithful to the original must something be to be considered a copy? Is imitation transmission, or is learning transmission? Imitaton, learning, and acquisition are all different kinds of copies.  Plotkin rejects the definition of a meme as  something passed on by imitation for four reasons: defining a meme as imitation is an oversimplification, requiring a meme to be imitable is unclear,  assuming thats imitation leads to greater copyinig fidelity is just wrong, and requiring high copying fidelity ignores the natural variation that causes memes to evolve. The last point mentioned is the distinction between surface memes and deep memes.  A surface meme, although dependent on larger memes for context, is narrow in scope, such as believing a certain store has the lowest prices around (obviously that could change if another store undercuts them one day.) A deep meme is a higher knowledge structure, usually embedded somehow in the culture itself.

 

The author's approach to the topic seems more to correct misinformation than define things concretely. In doing this he is perhaps leaving the door open for more discourse on how to define the term 'meme' and the science of culture.  The chapter seems more like a philosophical piece than a scientific piece, but as he says, that is basically the current state of memetics.

 

Darwinizing culture : the status of memetics as a science / edited by Robert Aunger ; with a foreword by Daniel Dennett. [0192632442 ] Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2000.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HM1041 .D37 2000