THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: The Dream of the Meme
Scruton, Roger
ARDLY A WEEK PASSES THESE DAYS without an article, in some popular magazine, expounding and endorsing the "selfish gene" theory of Richard...
...Scientific memes are subject to effective policing by the brainthatharborsthem,whichacceptsideasandtheories only as part of its own truth-directed method...
...901 Arlington, VA 22209 A P R I L 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 5 1 concept of truth, but follow their own reproductive path, indifferent to the aims of the organism that they haveinvaded...
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...From the point of view of memetics, absurd ideas have the same start in life as true theories, and assent is a retrospective honor bestowed on reproductive success...
...Theconceptofthememebelongswithothersubversive concepts--Marx's "ideology," Freud's unconscious, Foucault's "discourse"--in being aimed at discrediting common prejudice...
...Hence Dawkins's polemic gets off to a flying start, and it is hardly surprising if so many people, encountering the theory of the meme, say "yes, that's what it's all about...
...The theoryofthememeneitherdeniesthattruth,norundermines the 19th-century view that culture, understoodinthatway,isasmuchanactivityoftherational mind as science...
...And both activities are essential to us...
...Merely cultural memes are outside the purview of scientific inference and can run riot, causing all kinds of cognitiveandemotionaldisorders.Theyaresubjectto no external discipline, such as that contained in the T H EP U R S U I TO FK N O W L E D G E Announcing The American Spectator's Young Journalism Training Program Promoting Excellence in Journalism by Training the Next Generation of Writers & Journalists TheYoungJournalism Training Program provides practical, hands-on journalism training for journalists byjournalists.Program emphasisincludesnews writing, investigative journalism, writing and editing for the e-news media, and developing effective writing skills...
...Culture--both the high culture of art and music, and the wider culture embodied in a religious tradition--sorts ideas by theirintrinsicqualities,helpsustofeelathomeinthe world and to resonate to its moral significance...
...How else are we to understand the merciless destructioncarriedoutinthenameofAllah,thecompassionate, the merciful...
...there is emotional knowledge, which is the province of art, literature, and music...
...And does it not justify Dawkins's scathing description of faith as "one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate...
...Dennett adds that this process is not necessarily harmful: There are, among parasitical organisms, both symbionts, which coexist harmlessly with their hosts, and mutualists, which positively amplify the host's ability to survive and flourish in its environment.Nevertheless,itisDawkins'sclaim,andoneendorsed not only by Dennett but by many others who have joined the pilgrimage along the hitherto hidden slopesofMountImprobable,thatthereligiousmeme is a peculiarly poisonous one, which regularly produces mass hysteria, mass murder, and mass suicide in its host communities...
...That idea is appealing at the level of metaphor, but what does it amount to in fact...
...Memes stand to ideas as genes stand to organisms: If they exist at all (and no evidence has been given by Dawkins or anyone else for thinking that they do) then their sempiternal and purposelessreproductionisnoconcernofours.Ideas, by contrast, form part of the conscious network ofcriticalthinking.Weassessthemfortheirtruth,their validity, their moral propriety, their elegance, completeness, and charm...
...This claim, coming at a time when the Wahhabist insanity has again spread through the Islamic worldasitdidduringthe19thcentury,andwhenpeo-ple are regularly blowing up innocents, silencing opponents, and censoring discussion in the name of God, is bound to resonate in popular feeling...
...Does not this triumph of malicious nonsense demand the kind of explanation that Dawkins advances...
...ARDLY A WEEK PASSES THESE DAYS without an article, in some popular magazine, expounding and endorsing the "selfish gene" theory of Richard Dawkins.Thevisionofhumanbeingsasexistingforno higher purpose than to replicate their genes, and indeed(sincethatisnotapurposebutonlyafunction) withnorealpurposeatall,isgraduallyseepingintopopular culture...
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...I have heard it argued that we must recognize the moral rights of chimpanzees, since they share 98 percent of ourDNA.AndthosewhodefendtheGreatApeProject on these grounds seem not to be perturbed by the fact thatweshare50percentofourDNAwithbananas...
...Why not give weight tothedisciplinesthatinterprettheworld,andsohelp us to be at home in it...
...Moreover, Dawkins adds, this offense against science isalsoanoffenseagainstmorality.TheGodhypothesis survives in the human brain as a kind of parasite, one which--because it is detached from the process of rational thought--can take monstrous forms and encouragemonstrousactions.Thisideaisexpounded by Dawkins with a missionary zeal that recalls the polemics of Voltaire...
...We take them up and discard them,sometimesinthecourseofoursearchfortruth and explanation, sometimes in our search for meaning and value...
...It seeks to expose illusions, and to explain away our dreams...
...Like so many people wedded to the 19th-century view of science, Dawkins overlooks the 19th-century reaction--which said, "Wait a minute: science is not the only way to pursue knowledge...
...And just possibly there is transcendental knowledge, which is the province of religion...
...For Dawkins the Darwinian theory of evolution, backed up by the genetic account of how it all works, shows that the chance transformation of molecules in a primeval soupisasufficientexplanationofthelateremergenceofShakespeare.Nothingneedstobeaddedconcerning "the purpose of it all," and since ontological economy is a criterion of scientific truth, the God hypothesis drops out altogether, as an offense against science...
...It is one of the distinguishing characteristics of human beings, however, that they can distinguish an idea from the reality represented in it, can entertain propositions from which they withhold their assent, and move judge-likeintherealmofideas,callingeachbeforethe bar of rational argument, accepting them and rejecting them regardless of the reproductive cost...
...Matthew Arnold famously describedcultureas"apursuitofourtotalperfectionby means of getting to know, on all matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits" (Culture and Anarchy, 1869...
...But it possesses the very fault for which it purports to be a remedy: It is a spell, with which the scientistic mind seeks to conjure away the thingsthatposeathreattoit.Forreasonsbestknown to himself, Dawkins regards religion as a threat--not this or that religion, but any religion...
...The intellectuallandscaperemainsexactlyasitwasbeforetheDarwinianpilgrimssetouttodisenchantit.Thequestion that remains for us is not whether religion, but which...
...A meme is a selfreplicatingculturalentitywhich,lodginginthebrainof a human being, uses that brain to reproduce itself--in the way that a catchy tune reproduces itself in hums and whistles, so spreading like an epidemic through a human community, as did "La donna e mobile" the morningafterthefirstperformanceofRigoletto.Dawkinsarguesthatideas,beliefs,andattitudesaretheconscious forms taken by self-replicating entities, which T H EP U R S U I TO FK N O W L E D G E TheDreamoftheMeme by Roger Scruton H A P R I L 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 4 9 5 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R A P R I L 2 0 0 7 propagate themselves as diseases propagate themselves,byusingtheenergiesoftheirhosts: Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs,somemespropagatethemselvesinthememe pool by leaping from brain to brain by a process which,inthebroadsenseoftheterm,canbecalled imitation...
...There is moral knowledgetoo,whichistheprovinceofpracticalreason...
...But in waving the wand of memetics in the face of this specter, he proves incapable of charming it away...
...The only significant distinction to be made, when accounting forthissuccess,isbetweenmemesthatenhancethe life of their hosts, and memes that either destroy that life or co-exist symbiotically with it...
...Andthisquestion,addressedtotherationalmind,isa questionthatcanbeneitheransweredbyscience,nor debunked by it...
...Crucial to the anti-religious argument is the idea, introduced by Dawkins as the first step in a theory of "cultural replication," of the meme...
...TOMAKETHETHEORYremotelyplausible,Dawkins hastodistinguishmemesthatbelongtoscience from memes that are merely "cultural...
...Roger Scruton,thewriterandphilosopher,ismostrecently the author of Gentle Regrets: Thoughts From a Life (Continuum).R O G E RS C R U T O N Scientificmemesaresubjectto effectivepolicingbythebrainthat harborsthem,whichacceptsideas andtheoriesonlyaspartofits owntruth-directedmethod...
...THAT REACTION HAS LOSTnoneofitsappeal.Andit points to a fundamental weakness in "memetics...
...But it is itself a dream: a piece of ideology, accepted not for its truth but for the illusory power that it confers on the onewhoconjureswithit.Ithasproducedsomestrikingarguments--notleastthosegivenbyDanDennett in Breaking the Spell...
...Monogamy and polygamy, restraint andpromiscuityhaveallbeendefendedasgeneticstrategies.Altruismisextolledinironicaltones,asthebindingprincipleofthebeehiveandtheantheap,sothatthe personwho"laysdownhislifeforhisfriend"seemsno higher in the scheme of things than the soldier-ant whose genetic imprint demands suicidal retaliation...
...It has also been taken up by the philosopherDanDennett,inastrikingbook,Breaking the Spell, devoted to explaining, debunking, and--if possible--releasing the grip that religion holds over thehumanmind...
...Even if there are units of memetic information, propagated from brain to brain by some replicatingprocess,itisnottheythatcomebeforethe mind in conscious thinking...
...The impact of the theory has been enhanced by Dawkins's proselytizing atheism...
...Why privilege science, just because it sets out to explain the world...
...Although culture isn't science, it is nevertheless a conscious activity of the critical mind...
...And it is not only in science that this attitude of critical reflection is maintained...
...Moral dilemmas are transcribed into the language of genetics, as though this has finally permitted their solution...
Vol. 40 • April 2007 • No. 3
