文化进化的meme理论及其难题

meme概念来自英国著名生物学家道金斯。道金斯把meme看做是文化进化的基本单元。meme概念提出后得到了学术界一些学者的赞同,在他们的努力下,20世纪末逐步形成了用meme解释文化进化的新领域。meme理论把文化进化看做是文化复制因子--meme遗传、变异和选择的结果。但是meme存在的合法性及其进化的机制受到了许多学者的质疑,meme理论还面临着许多尚未解决的难题,现有的科学证据并不能确定meme的存在,同样也不能确定meme储存和传递的机制。

Meme Views of Cultural Evolution and Problems

Since British biologist Richard Dawkins introduced the notion of meme, a replication element of cultural evolution, into the scholastic lexicon, many scholars have accepted it and heralded meme as the savior of social sciences. With their joint efforts, meme as a new discipline of cultural evolution has developed in the end of twentieth century. From the meme's point of view, the cultural evolution is a process of heredity, variation, and selection of memcs. However, there are others at the opposite side of the perspective who argue that meme is no more than a cumbersome terminology of little value. Meme still faces a lot of difficult problems that can't be solved at present. There is no scientific evidence that can prove the existence of meme and the mechanism of its storage and descent.