The social replicators

I have been planning to write over this topic for a long time now. Ever since I read this book by Sir Richard Dawkins (British ethologist), named “The selfish gene” (my favourite), I was fascinated by the idea that “Ideas” evolve. To talk about this book in brief, it puts forth how evolution of organism is gene centered (rather than organism as a basic unit of its action). This is the basis of neo-Darwinism. This book also introduces to a term, “meme”. Most importantly the book calls the gene 'selfish', itself is a big topic of discussion (as this statement imparts a charateristic of consiousness onto genes, which are till date only known to replicate as a result of “so called” simple process of Replication).

Coming back to the original topic, if we define 'gene' as a structural unit of life, then 'meme' has to be defined as 'the cultural unit of life'.

Web definition of meme: a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one person to another by non-genetic means (as by imitation); "memes are the cultural counterpart of genes"

(Source: wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn).

It has been more than 3.5 billion years that life is evolving. From its original state of some basic chemical reactions guided by some catalysts (enzymes) to very complex mechanisms of K+/Na+ nerve impulse transmissions and reaction to stimulus, it has achieved a great degree of organisation. Throughout this course all the forces of nature, which caused evolution (i.e. Natural selection, mutation, variation), acted upon the basic units, 'genes'. Approximately 15000 years ago man began its journey of becoming the highest evolved organism on earth and today he has reached its peak, using tools like techology, innovation and imagination. But what led to this extraordinary process of we the humans (Homo sapiens) reaching such greater heights? What boosted such a rapid change in the normal organismal behaviour? What would you bet on, genes? Or something else?

Initially may be yes, since we do not have an answer even to the sudden cranial expansion, that resulted into intellectuals like us ;-)

But there was something else that was moving through the generations and through the populations, faster than genes could: “MEMES”.

These ideological units could transfer faster, since the breakthrough of scripts, languages etc. That was a better medium of passing them, than other biological mediums, like learning by experience. The theory of evolution tells us that rate of evolution is proportional to the variations available in the population. More the variation, better is the selection process and faster is the adaptation (from nature's point of view). As we can see that memes take less time to pass down from person to person and are easily mutable. It is quite clear that a gene will take a complete generation to show its effect of mutation, but a meme can mutate 'N' number of times during a generation and that results into a group of people with variable ideas at the same time, such that selection process can act on such a varied/distict forms of memes in such a short span. This helps building better concepts and ideologies in very short period. This is how I believe that man could come to this state. Well I am going to comment on the other aspects of this issue in my forthcuming articles (as and when possible, as this was just an introduction to the concept).

So we can conclude that, till the time humans came into this big picture of evolution 'genes evolved', then 'memes took over' (offcourse this doesn't mean that genetic mode of evolution is on hold).

I would like to end this article with few of the best lines I have read in any biological books which make me think deeper into this vast expanse of biological world (but they might not be related to the current article): I quote #

“Our genes made us. We animals exist for their preservation and are nothing more than their throwaway survival machines. The world of the selfish gene is one of savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit. But what of the acts of apparent altruism found in nature-the bees who commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, or the birds who risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk? Do they contravene the fundamental law of gene selfishness?”

# Introduction to the book 'The selfish gene - Richard Dawkins' by Jeffrey R. Baylis.

Parallel strategies

The new series recently shown on discovery channel, 'Life' is an amazing picturisation of what life is actually about. The show tells us that its all about survival. The episode on Mammals ended on a very interesting note that struck a chord in my brain. The last sentence of that episode, as narrated by David Attenborrogh said that Mammals could survive very well and diversified on this beautiful planet because of passing of wisdom from one generation to another in a family structure (i.e. Grouping together) and emotional attachment among individuals. (# Apologies for not quoting the exact words. #)

Taking advantage of 'not being alone' is not a strategy developed by Mammals, not even by insects (ex. Ants, termites etc.) but it goes beyond that. It was discovered by the first multicellular organism which came into existance on this earth millions of years ago. Life as we know originated in the water bodies or pools or 'soup'(as called by many theorists). First coecervates and then prokaryotes came, which were solitary. Then came eukaryotes where for the first time, advantage of 'not being alone' was exploited. Multicellularity came into picture. I would love to say that, cells understood that sticking together made their chances of being alive greater than usual. Factually speaking, those who could do it were given a green signal by nature, in other words 'naturally selected'. They continued doing so and thus we see all the giant structures formed as a result of that ability. Here I would also like to remind the readers about those who are not existing today and the ones of whom we just hear stories of, “The Dinasours”.

Multicellularity is not just about being together in numbers, its also about sharing work. With the process of differenciation the whole unit (organism) was able to utilise the resources well and also the components of the unit became inter dependent. This was a stage of division of labour. And this is indeed a good survival strategy, proved by the expanse of multicellular organisms on this planet.

In animal world, Mammals have used this strategy exceptionally well to become the dominant class of organisms on earth. Our globe was ones ruled by some other class of animals, named Reptiles. They so much represented this planet that there is a whole era (Jurassic) named over them. Mammals co-existed but just to live in small holes and hide from massive strong predators. Suddently Mammals came to power. Offcourse there are other reasons of upwelling of this class like extinction of the Dino's, higher adaptation capabilities (being warm blodded animals), high brain weight to body weight ratio (shows greater use of intellect than insticts), but the one that cannot be forgotten is sticting together. Family structure, sharing, caring, dependence is prominently seen in Mammals. In a different way but the strategy of grouping together is being used by these creatures. May it be the herds grazing in Savannas, Meer cats standing tall & watching over each others backs, a group of elephants in Africa, bunch of Lions hunting together with tactics, a group of dolphins fishing in deep sea and so on.... (not to forget humans being social animals).

This shows the use of same old strategy, 'NOT TO BE ALONE', in a parallel way at different instances of evolution of life.

NOTE# All these things bring forward a point raised by Sir Richard Dawkins, that individuality should not be given to the organism but to the genes, because ultimately its a fierce battle amongst them and everything starts with it.

EMOTIONS: An evolutionary edge

Emotions are a kind of certain behavioural responses given out when a particular stimuli reaches brain. In simple animal behaviour language it is by a releaser concept. We see the use of emotions only in higher organisms, generally mammals (and its considered as an evolutionary advantage). It was first described by Sir Charles Darwin (1972) that non-human animals also possess emotions. There was an early theory of emotion proposed independently by William James and Carl Lange (1834-1900), who believed that emotion is perception of internal physiological reaction to external stimuli.

The origin of emotion in life history cannot be traced, but it certainly has some evolutionary significance. Since it is the fact to be noted that lower organisms didn't have emotional behaviour as it is a kind of learned behaviour. The lower organisms in the tree of evolution use their instincts for their survival and to respond to the environment. The instinctive behaviour is a gene based response. And we know that there was a gradual shift from instincts to the learned behaviour, which gives a better survival score. Emotion comes under the same category of behaviour. As we see humans beings at the top of the evolutionary table, we can assume that we have mastered their use. In this article I wish to concentrate on the human, since interpretation of non-human emotions is itself a major topic of study. Human beings developed emotions as a very important step in the course of cultural evolution (as we know since Homo sapien came into existence its the cultural evolution/memetic evolution that is more actively seen than the genetic one). They help in communication, as they also are a part of social behaviour humans possess. For that matter I believe that we live in the "World of emotions".

In early human days when language was not used, human race used sounds, from which came speech. Along with the sound and facial expressions the early hominids were able to communicate. As time passed came along the language, signs and symbols. This was a better mode of communication. The language along with the expressions took over the ancient mode of communication. Slowly the scripts came into picture. Facial gestures were used for conveying things which is also the scenario today. The main thing which developed is language and phonetics. Interestingly today emotions are conveyed even through actions, without the facial movements. Today they are supported by different words in the language we use, they can be expressed by variation in the pitch of the voice and intensity of sound etc. This is the state of it today.

But biologically speaking its just a reaction to the external stimuli. Many physiological reactions can decide the course of such responses. Mainly hormones are the major factors influencing it. Studies show that simply excitation of certain centres of brain can elicit responses of different glands under the control of pituitary (King of glands). When we cry its the tear glands, while expressing anger/excitement its adrenalin running in our body. These processes sometimes also affect the normal body functions like, heart rate (pulse), water balance (sweating/urination) etc. That shows how much external environments control us, its the way we perceive.

When we look at it the other way round, its a totally different picture. We can see a selfish biology acting behind all this. According to selfish gene theory (Richard Dawkins), every organism has a selfish motives behind his actions (may be conscious or unconscious) (#NOTE: Except altruism, which even evolutionary biologists are finding out why?#). Here I am not going into the subject of memetics but it can be summed up saying every biological entity is selfish enough to survive. Well emotions can be used as a weapon of biological selfishness. For example, it can be used to disguise a person from actual situation. It again depends on the analytical powers of that particular person and beware of such consciously performed acts.

Whatever it is however it is, we have to accept that the world without emotions is useless. Without them this "beautiful world" is nothing but rocks and living chemical units (systems), well organised and called as biota. That proves that emotions are integral part of human life. Since beauty is a kind of good feeling that I expressed while mentioning about this world in the above sentences. That proves that they are integrated. So now it is up to us to think, how much importance to be given to them in our lives?

Having mentioned all these things I forgot to include that "EMOTIONS ARE A HEIGHT OF SELFISH BEHAVIOUR (BIOLOGICALLY) SHOWN BY ANY ORGANISM"...