The
Replication of Complex Culture
In order to
replicate, memes need to be able to pass on as well as to preserve
their content.
The key question here is not so much which copying
mechanisms support the spread of memetic information,
as how any such
mechanism can support the immense complexity of human
culture.
Any
account of cultural development must include an explanation
of what
has enabled this complexity to increase and persist.
If
memes are the
units of cultural evolution, then their replication
methods must be able
to sustain the enormous breadth and depth of
information that has built
up over the millennia, and meme theory must be able to
account for
how this happens.
Following a brief look at the ways
in which cultural
information spreads, the bulk of this chapter is
therefore given over to
an examination of the key features of the replication
of complexity, investigating
how it might work in principle as well as how it is
played out
in practice, in culture as in nature.
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