Genes, Memes, and Bemes

After talking with Russell, he suggested that I succinctly define what I mean when I say "gene", "meme", and "beme", since I haven't yet clarified those terms in my posts so far.



Quick Definitions of Gene, Meme, and Beme

A gene is a unit of heredity (things copied from parent to child) in evolution. Though popularly associated with only biological evolution, genes exist in any system involving evolution. The vast majority of the time, genes directly affect the capacity for an organism to survive and its capacity to replicate its genes (eg, having children). More information can be found on the relevant Wikipedia article.

A meme is a gene in the specific context of cultural evolution, where the organisms are cultural trends that compete and cooperate. The term was first coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene as an analogy for how genes work, but soon took off as a useful concept in cultural development.

Here's a video of a TEDTalk by Susan Blackmore that lucidly describes the basics of memes, amongst other interesting hypotheses and observations about them.

A beme is a meme in the even more specific context of the evolution of culture and fashion in building design. This term was coined by me for this research studio to aid in succinctly understanding and describing relevant aspects of my design methodology for the coming final semester. At its base, it is a class of meme, which itself is an abstracted class of gene. When I talk about evolution involving bemes, I will refer to it as bemetic evolution.



Evidence Supporting the Validity of the Concept of a Beme

In a way, the reasoning laid out below served as a loose, conceptual experiment to test the hypothesis that "bemes exist and apply to the evolution of building design". The crux of the evidence for bemes is proving evolution can be applied to the culture and process of building design. As such, a specific definition is required to determine when a system does and does not involve evolution.

According to part of the Wikipedia article mentioned above, in Dan Dennett's book "Consciousness Explained" (1991, Boston: Little, Brown and Co.), evolution exists when a system encapsulates three conditions:

• variation, or the introduction of new change to existing elements,
• heredity or replication, or the capacity to create copies of elements
• differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the environment than another.

So now it must be proven whether or not the culture of building design involves variation, heredity (or replication), and differential fitness. If any one condition is missing, by definition, the system doesn't involve evolution.

Looking into the history of building design culture, bemetic evolution has manifested as the use of precedent inspiration (replication and heredity), the reinterpretation and appropriation of precedent (variation), and the success and popularity of a design (differential fitness through cultural selection).

And thus, "bemes exist and apply to the evolution of building design" has been qualitatively confirmed through philosophical argumentation.