แ่ต่เป็นสิ่งที่มุมมองที่เกิดเมื่อเราเริ่มรู้ว่า กฎการคัดเลือกตามธรรมชาติไม่ได้จำกัดแต่ในโลกของชีววิทยา
Given some kind of copying machinery that makes lots of slightly different copies of the same information, and given that only a few of those copies survive to be copied again, an evolutionary process must occur and design will appear out of destruction. You might call it "design by death" since clever designs thrive because of the many failures that don't.
The information that is copied, varied and selected is called the replicator, and the process is well understood when applied to biology. Genes are copied, mutated and selected over and over again. Assemblages of genes are used to build vehicles that carry them around, protect them and propagate them. These vehicles - the lumbering robots, as Richard Dawkins calls them - are animals and plants, the prolific and exquisitely designed products of the first replicator.About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next.
อีกประมาณสี่พันล้านปีต่อมาหลังจากเกิด the first replicator มีบางสิ่งผิดประหลาดไปจากเดิมเกิดขึ้น มีสมาชิกของสายพันธ์หนึ่งเริ่มมีการเลียนแบบสมาชิกตัวอื่น โดยการเลียนแบบนี้ถือเป็นการคัดลอกรูปแบบหนึ่ง ทำให้กระบวนการวิวัฒนาการรูปแบบใหม่ได้เกิดขึ้น แทนที่การคัดลอกจะเกิดบน DNA สายพันธ์ลิงไร้หางเดินสองเท้าที่มีรูปแบบสังคมเริ่มใช้สมองขนาดใหญ่ของมันจดจำและเลียนแบบสัญลักษณ์เสียง และพฤติกรรมของลิงตัวอื่นๆ การเลียนแบบนี้อาจไม่แม่นยำมาก แต่เพียงพอที่จะทำให้เกิดกระบวนการใหม่ขึ้นมาได้ Dawkins เรียก replicator ใหม่นี้ว่า memes สิ่งมีชีวิตจากแต่ก่อนเป็นเพียงพาหนะได้กลายมาเป็นเครื่องจักรที่ใช้คัดลอกข้อมูลรูปแบบหนึ่ง
The idea of memes as a cultural analogue of genes has been much maligned, and most biologists still reject it. Yet memetics has much to offer in explaining human nature. According to meme theory, humans are radically different from all other species because we alone are meme machines.
แนวคิดเกี่ยวกับ memes เป็น วัฒนธรรม เทียบกับ genes ส่วนมากถูกพูดไปในทางที่ไม่ถูกต้อง และนักชีววิทยาส่วนมากยังคงไม่ยอมรับแนวคิดนี้ แต่ความสามารถในการจดจำสามารถช่วยอธิบายธรรมชาติของมนุษย์ได้มากขึ้น โดยหากอ้างทฤษฎีเกี่ยวกับ memes มนุษย์แตกต่างจากสัตว์อื่นมาก เพราะเราเป็น meme machines อยู่เพียงสายพันธ์เดียว
Human intelligence is not just a bit more or a bit better than other kinds of intelligence, it is something completely different, based on a new evolutionary process and a new kind of information.
ความฉลาดของมนุษย์ไม่ได้ได้ต่างจากความฉลาดรูปแบบอื่นเพียงแต่ ต่างกันตรงที่กระบวนบนข้อมูลรูปแบบใหม่
The main difference between conventional theories and memetics is this: most biologists assume that culture and language evolved because they helped humans survive and pass on their genes, and that genes retain ultimate control.So memes began to proliferate. What began as an adaptation soon became like a parasite - a new evolving entity that changed the apes and their world forever. Once memes were proliferating, individuals benefited from copying the latest and most successful ones, and then passed on any genes that helped them do so. This "memetic drive" forced their brains to get bigger and bigger, and to become adept at copying the most successful memes, eventually leading to language, art, music, ritual and religion - the successful designs of human culture.
This process was dangerous. Small brains are much more efficient if you don't have to copy anything, but once memes are around you cannot survive unless you do. So brains had to get bigger, and big brains are costly to produce, dangerous to give birth to and expensive to run.
There is also danger in what is copied. If you start copying anything at all then you might copy dangerous memes, like throwing yourself off a cliff or using up all your resources in pointless rituals. This creates an arms race between two selfish replicators - memes benefiting from brains that copy anything and everything; genes benefiting from brains that are smaller, more efficient and highly selective.
Either of these dangers might have finished our ancestors off, but they pulled through. The result was a compromise, with human brains being just about as big as our bodies could stand, and yet selective enough to avoid copying lethal memes. In the same way that parasites tend to co-evolve with their hosts to become less lethal, so memes co-evolved with us. Languages, religions, skills and fashions that began as parasites turned into symbionts. Not only do we get along with our memes now, we could not live without them.
The information that is copied, varied and selected is called the replicator, and the process is well understood when applied to biology. Genes are copied, mutated and selected over and over again. Assemblages of genes are used to build vehicles that carry them around, protect them and propagate them. These vehicles - the lumbering robots, as Richard Dawkins calls them - are animals and plants, the prolific and exquisitely designed products of the first replicator.
About 4 billion years after the appearance of the first replicator, something extraordinary happened. Members of one species of lumbering robot began to imitate one another. Imitation is a kind of copying, and so a new evolutionary process was born. Instead of cellular chemistry copying the order of bases on DNA, a sociable species of bipedal ape began to use its big brain to copy gestures, sounds and other behaviours. This copying might not have been very accurate, but it was enough to start a new evolutionary process. Dawkins called the new replicators "memes". A living creature, once just a vehicle of the first replicator, was now the copying machinery for the next.
The idea of memes as a cultural analogue of genes has been much maligned, and most biologists still reject it. Yet memetics has much to offer in explaining human nature. According to meme theory, humans are radically different from all other species because we alone are meme machines. Human intelligence is not just a bit more or a bit better than other kinds of intelligence, it is something completely different, based on a new evolutionary process and a new kind of information.
The main difference between conventional theories and memetics is this: most biologists assume that culture and language evolved because they helped humans survive and pass on their genes, and that genes retain ultimate control. Memetics challenges that assumption. Although the capacity for imitation must once have been adaptive for the apes who started it, evolution has no foresight and could not have predicted the consequences of letting loose a new evolutionary process. Nor could it have retained control of memes once they began evolving in their own right.
So memes began to proliferate. What began as an adaptation soon became like a parasite - a new evolving entity that changed the apes and their world forever. Once memes were proliferating, individuals benefited from copying the latest and most successful ones, and then passed on any genes that helped them do so. This "memetic drive" forced their brains to get bigger and bigger, and to become adept at copying the most successful memes, eventually leading to language, art, music, ritual and religion - the successful designs of human culture.
This process was dangerous. Small brains are much more efficient if you don't have to copy anything, but once memes are around you cannot survive unless you do. So brains had to get bigger, and big brains are costly to produce, dangerous to give birth to and expensive to run.
There is also danger in what is copied. If you start copying anything at all then you might copy dangerous memes, like throwing yourself off a cliff or using up all your resources in pointless rituals. This creates an arms race between two selfish replicators - memes benefiting from brains that copy anything and everything; genes benefiting from brains that are smaller, more efficient and highly selective.
Either of these dangers might have finished our ancestors off, but they pulled through. The result was a compromise, with human brains being just about as big as our bodies could stand, and yet selective enough to avoid copying lethal memes. In the same way that parasites tend to co-evolve with their hosts to become less lethal, so memes co-evolved with us. Languages, religions, skills and fashions that began as parasites turned into symbionts. Not only do we get along with our memes now, we could not live without them.
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