The Evolution of Cultural Resilience and Complexity

The study of memetics has thus far mostly applied a reductionist view of genetics to describe the pathogenic infectivity and transmission dynamics of ideas/memes. In this position paper, we take a first look at some of the distinctive attributes of cultural evolution through the lens of complexity science and theoretical biology. The article comments briefly on connections between memetics and complex biological systems. First, we describe some basic roles that selforganization and selective processes play in the integration of memes into personal mental constructs and the consequences this has on the complexity of these constructs (meme networks). Using the concept of an attractor landscape, we propose that the fitness of an idea may have consistent and predictable influences on attractor basin attributes for pre-existing mental constructs. We compare these ideas with findings reported on the evolution of attractor landscapes for gene regulatory networks and particularly, we consider whether insights from GRN studies can be translated into testable hypotheses on the evolution of cultural complexity. We also consider how the attractor landscape metaphor could facilitate a better understanding of how good ideas can paradoxically both reinforce existing beliefs yet also construct the very conditions that make new sets of beliefs possible.