Richard Dawkins first proposed his version of cultural evolutionary theory in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. The main thrust of that book was a defence of the gene as the unit of biological selection and the organism as a “survival machine” for its genes. Towards the end, however, he added his view that culture also evolves and that “memes” are the units of cultural selection.

The key to Dawkins's idea is that Darwinian evolution is a particular instance of a process that we might also expect to find in other areas. It will be helpful, therefore, to begin with a swift review of Charles Darwin's theory of descent, before explaining how the meme hypothesis emerges from it. Having characterized Dawkins's own view of what has come to be termed “memetics”, I then briefly defend its adoption against the alternative research programme of sociobiology. There is also in this chapter an important clarification of the relation between genes and memes. These introductory discussions provide history and context for the more detailed investigations of subsequent chapters.

Genetic Evolution

Natural Selection

In the early nineteenth century, the problem of the origin of species was so far from being solved that Darwin referred to it as the “mystery of mysteries”. He worked on his own solution for more than two decades, until in 1859 The Origin of Species brought together a vast mass of previously isolated facts, all of which fitted into place when seen in the light of his theory of descent.