Culturgen
Encyclopedia
Culturgen is a term coined in 1980 by two American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 scientists, the biomathematician
Mathematical biology
Mathematical and theoretical biology is an interdisciplinary scientific research field with a range of applications in biology, medicine and biotechnology...

 Charles J. Lumsden and the
sociobiologist
Sociobiology
Sociobiology is a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethology, anthropology,...

 E. O. Wilson
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher , theorist , naturalist and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants....

, to denote a hypothetical 'unit' of culture, in their controversial attempt to analyse cultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...

 by using techniques borrowed from population genetics
Population genetics
Population genetics is the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes into account the factors of recombination, population subdivision and population...

, and to infer a theory of evolution of the human mind. It effectively means much the same as the older term "cultural trait" used by anthropologists, and offers similar difficulties of identification and definition. The fullest exposition of their theory appeared in their book Genes, Mind, and Culture: the coevolutionary process (1981), which received many reviews in the scientific press, many of them highly negative; it was re-issued in 2005 with a review of subsequent developments. The term has declined in popularity, and the older term meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...

 (coined by Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

 in his book The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...

(1976)) is now used in its stead almost universally (even by Wilson in his later writings).

For a discussion of the concept, see Meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...

.
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