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.Rather, the mind has a certain innate potential whichdevelops as a result of interaction with its environment, both physicaland cultural.Some of what it takes in will indeed be absorbed so deeply 184 The Selfish Memethat it could accurately be described as a part of that individual, forminga filter for future cultural input (counsellors sometimes refer to this asa script ).Nonetheless, we retain a degree of choice and flexibility inour reactions to many of the experiences and memes that we encounter,as is shown when siblings form surprisingly incompatible memories ofincidents and themes from their shared childhood.The consciousness and intentionality that is being claimed for ourmental lives is, however, quite reconcilable with the essentially mindlessprocess played out in any evolutionary algorithm, whether its medium bebiological or cultural.In many areas of science different levels of descrip-tion can be applied to the same phenomenon, and it is no different here.The world can be seen through physical, chemical, biological, culturalor psychological lenses, and the mindlessness of the cultural evolution-ary algorithm need no more undermine our identity as conscious selvesthan does the mindlessness of the physical or chemical descriptions ofour interactions. 13Science, Religion and Society: What Can MemesTell Us?Having tested the structural foundations of memetics, there may now befurther benefits to be gained by looking at some of its more practicalapplications.This chapter aims to deepen our understanding of memet-ics, as well as of science and religion, by examining those cultural areasthrough its lens.ScienceThere are many cultural areas in which knowledge and skills are passedon and develop between generations , but perhaps the most notable isscience.How does it look, from the perspective of meme theory?The most obvious starting point is the emergence of novel theories.Innovation, according to meme theory, is due to two factors: recombi-nation and mutation.In recombination, existing memes are appropri-ately recombined in new situations, creating new ways of thought andnovel effects, perhaps as the result of previously recessive memes effects being revealed in the reshuffle.This sort of memetic innovation is seen,in science, in the process of extrapolation from existing results to anovel theory.Existing theses are reshuffled perhaps in the light of newevidence and this may lead to unforeseen consequences, or even to afresh hypothesis.This process cannot, however, account for the eureka! phenomenon,where the hypothesis was not itself the direct outcome of previous results.Such instances appear to be more in keeping with the mutational elementin memetic variation.If this is so, and the mutation of memes is a goodmodel for scientific innovation, then what does it predict about the nature185 186 The Selfish Memeof such innovation? First, it must lead us to expect that new theoriesare as likely to be false as true, and as likely to be incompatible withexisting evidence and thought as not, since the most important aspect ofmemetic mutation is its randomness: the fact that it has no intrinsic biastowards increased fitness.Clearly, this expectation has been met.Just asmany genetic variations actually decrease fitness, so a large proportion of eureka! type shrieks are followed more or less closely by expletives: thenew idea does not have the explanatory or predictive success necessaryfor the survival of scientific hypotheses, or it is rejected as incompatiblewith contemporary beliefs.It has been noted, however, that there are restrictions on mutationsrandomness: it is not true that any convenient mutation might occur.Which memes do mutate, and in what way, will be constrained by theircontent, by their environment and by the existing embryology .To putthis in terms of scientific theories, their development will be constrainedby their subject matter, by the best available evidence and by the conse-quences of existing thought in that area.None of these observations isparticularly original, but they should lead us to look at the developmentof science in a different way.There is a popular view that the progress(even if slowly and not very directly) of scientific thought towards thetruth will be constrained only by the limits that technology imposes onthe best available evidence.In contrast, meme theory implies that someof the most significant restrictions on scientific progress will stem morefrom the existence of whichever theories, evidence or methods there arealready, than from their accuracy and suitability.Indeed this provides a neat account of the historical success of theorieswhich we now view as farcical (consider phlogiston s negative mass , forexample).It does not seem likely that our intellectual predecessors wereless intelligent than us; the deficiencies that we now see in their thesesmust, therefore, also have been available to them.According to memeticsthe reason why these problems come to light now, although they did notdo so earlier, is that the meme which prevailed at any particular timewas the available meme that was then most compatible with the rest ofthe meme pool.Indeed, it would not have been so successful if that werenot the case.Now, on the other hand, many of the past s memes arenot compatible with the existing meme pool, and we see problems withthem as a result of their conflict with prevailing ideas (including the latestavailable empirical evidence).In this context it is worth remembering that, like genetics, memetics issimply a theory about the transmission and development of information. Science, Religion: What Can Memes Tell Us? 187It accounts for the relation between that information and its externalconsequences, but says nothing about its intrinsic value
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