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understood in terms of the competition between genes. Earlier in the twentieth century, biologists had blithely talked about evolution occurring for the ‘good of the species’ without worrying about the exact mechanisms involved, but in the 1960s serious problems with this view began to be recognised (Williams 1966). For example, if a group of organisms all act for the good of the group then one individual who does not can easily exploit the rest. He will then leave more descendants who in turn do not act for the group, and the group benefit will be lost. On the more modern ‘gene’s eye view’, evolution may
appear
to proceed in the interests of the individual, or for the good of the species, but in fact it is all driven by thecompetition between genes. This new viewpoint provided a much more powerful understanding of evolution and has come to be known as ‘selfish–gene theory’.
    We must be absolutely clear about what ‘selfish’ means in this context. It does not mean genes
for
selfishness. Such genes would incline their carriers to act selfishly and that is something quite different. The term ‘selfish’ here means that the genes act only for themselves; their only interest is their own replication; all they want is to be passed on to the next generation. Of course, genes do not ‘want’ or have aims or intentions in the same way as people do; they are only chemical instructions that can be copied. So when I say they ‘want’, or are ‘selfish’ I am using a shorthand, but this shorthand is necessary to avoid lengthy explanations. It will not lead us astray if we remember that genes either
are
or
are not
successful at getting passed on into the next generation. So the shorthand ‘genes want
x’
can always be spelled out as ‘genes that do
x
are more likely to be passed on’. This is the only power they have – replicator power. And it is in this sense that they are selfish.
    Dawkins also introduced the important distinction between ‘replicators’ and their ‘vehicles’. A replicator is anything of which copies are made, including ‘active replicators’ whose nature affects the chances of their being copied again. A vehicle is the entity that interacts with the environment, which is why Hull (1988a) prefers the term ‘interactors’ for a similar idea. Vehicles or interactors carry the replicators around inside them and protect them. The original replicator was presumably a simple self–copying molecule in the primeval soup, but our most familiar replicator now is DNA. Its vehicles are organisms and groups of organisms that interact with each other as they live out their lives in the seas or the air, the forests or fields. Genes are the selfish replicators that drive the evolution of the biological world here on earth but Dawkins believes there is a more fundamental principle at work. He suggested that wherever it arises, anywhere in the universe, ‘all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities’ (1976, p. 192). This is the foundation for the idea of Universal Darwinism; the application of Darwinian thinking way beyond the confines of biological evolution.
    At the very end of the book he asked an obvious, if provocative, question. Are there any other replicators on our planet? The answer, he claimed, is ‘Yes’. Staring us in the face, although still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup of culture, is another replicator – a unit of imitation.
    We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of
imitation
. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to
meme
.
    As examples, he suggested ‘tunes, ideas, catch–phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches’. He mentioned scientific ideas that catch on and propagate themselves around the