The Selfish Gene

Dawkins writes that genetic evolution affects all organisms, unless there is some alternative reason, and how culture differentiates humans: “Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution” (140). Languages get passed from generation to generation intelligibly, yet over many generations become unintelligible. This evolution happens much faster than among genes.

P.F. Jenkins has described the transmission of songs among island birds. Rather than songs getting inherited through genes, young males copy their neighbors. A “song pool” (140) forms like a gene pool. Copying mistakes lead to new songs. Human customs, such as dress, diet, art, and engineering, evolve quickly in a different manner than biological evolution. In both biological and cultural evolution, however, improvements add up.

Some scientists have attempted to explain human culture through biological evolution. Dawkins thinks that cultural evolution requires going further than the gene. Genes are replicators. Dawkins speculates that life on any other planet would also evolve through differential survival rates of replicators. However, replicators elsewhere could use molecules other than DNA:

But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicator and other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet.