Mokyr likens “useful knowledge” to the genotype and techniques to the phenotype. He believes that an evolutionary theory of technology must in some way capture the genotype-phenotype distinction by including a distinction between some underlying structure that constrains a manifested entity. In technology, the underlying structure is Q and the manifested entity is X. There are mappings between Q and X when one or more elements in Q give rise to one or more elements in X. For example, the now-defunct humoral theory of disease gave rise to a series of medical techniques, including the bleeding and purging of patients suffering from fever. Mokyr admits that the relation between Q and X deviates in several ways from the genotype-phenotype relationship. For instance, a gene and the phenotypic trait it gives rise to must be part of the same carrying organism. But if an individual masters a technique, he need not be knowledgeable of the “useful knowledge” that formed the basis of it, and this knowledge may be stored in other minds or storage devices, or may even have been lost.
Techniques, Mokyr claims, are subjected to selective pressures. When a technique has been used, its outcome is evaluated using a set of selection criteria that detemine whether it will be used again or not. This, he holds, is similar to the way in which selection criteria pick living specimens and decide whether they survive and reproduce. He does not hold it to be important whether this selection occurs by the same human agent who used a technique previously or by other human agents. Agents may again select techniques that they have used previously, and other agents may learn or imitate techniques, which is also a form of selection. When a technique is selected again, it is reproduced, in Mokyr’s terminology. So reproduction of techniques may take place through learning and imitation, or through reselection by a human agent. Mokyr points out that the analogy between biological selection and the selection of techniques breaks down on an important point: selection of techniques is not blind, but is performed by conscious units, firms and households that do the selecting. Humans are, in this model, not the selected but the selectors. Mokyr claims there is also selection between elements of Q. Here it is not their perceived usefulness but their perceived truth or veracity that determines whether they are conserved, and whether they are used to create techniques. Their truth is tested by established rules in society, for instance rules of science.
Mokyr is not fully clear on the conditions that create variation (or “innovation”). He calls the creation of new “useful knowledge” mutation, and defines such mutations as “discoveries about natural phenomena”, but does not specify a mechanism for it. He does suggest that the creation of new techniques often results from new combinations of knowledge in Q. He refers to the possibility of a general drive in human agents to devote resources to innovation, but does not develop this idea. Moreover, new techniques need not result from new (combinations of) knowledge. Techniques can also change through experience and learning by doing, or may emerge from “pure novelty” like mutations. The use of new techniques may also influence the set of “useful knowledge”. For instance, the invention of telescopes impacted knowledge of astronomy, and early steam engines influenced the development of theoretical physics. So technological evolution, in Mokyr’s theory, may also involve Lamarckian feedback mechanisms from phenotype to genotype, or from X to Q.
Mokyr’s theory, like Basalla’s, holds that the basic three ideas of Darwinism apply in some form to technological change. There is phenotypic variation between techniques, techniques have differential fitness, and there is some form of heritability in that subsequent generations of techniques tend to resemble their predecessors. Unlike Basalla, Mokyr upholds the genotype-phenotype distinction by putting what-knowledge and how-knowledge in those two roles and assuming there is a mapping-relation from what-knowledge to techniques. He is therefore able to adhere to some principle of genetic reproduction, according to which most techniques depend on underlying knowledge, and their reproduction often depends on the presence of this knowledge. Mokyr is also able, better than Basalla, to adhere to a principle of mutation and recombination. Mutations occur to Q, through new discoveries, and knowledge in Q may be combined in new ways to yield new techniques. This analogy breaks down, to some extent, since techniques may also mutate and subsequently reproduce without any changes in underlying knowledge.
Mokyr thus takes the analogy between biological evolution and technological change considerably farther than Basalla, and presents an account on which technological change is strongly analogous to biological evolution, although disanalo-gies are also present. Mokyr does not adhere to the principle of blindness, since he holds that variation and selection are driven by conscious human agents. In Basalla’s theory it was artifacts that were the object of variation, reproduction, and selection by humans. In Mokyr’s theory, the object is techniques, which are a type of knowledge. In both cases, the trajectory of these objects may be described in evolutionary terms, but is nevertheless the immediate result of human deliberation and purposive action.
5 Robert Aunger’s Theory
Anthropologist Robert Aunger has developed an account of technological change within the context of memetics (Aunger, 2002). Memetics is an evolutionary approach to culture that was initially proposed by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (1976). Dawkins claimed that culture might have its own evolutionary mechanism, separate from that of biological evolution, and that it is dependent on basic units of propagation similar to genes, which he called “memes”. A meme is the basic meaningful unit of culture and the basic unit of cultural inheritance. Memes are akin to ideas. The religious concept of heaven, the Newtonian concept of gravitation, the notion of a scarf, the notion of a semicolon, the idea of a handshake, all these are memes, or complexes of memes. Memes are capable of reproduction, and are subjected to Darwinian processes of blind variation and selection. They compete with each other in an environment of other ideas, and human biological needs, that determine whether they will be selected and survive in their hosts, or be copied by other hosts and hence spread throughout a population. Importantly, memeticists believe that the basic selection mechanism for memes is not conscious, and involves forces that are beyond the control of individual agents.
The analogy between biological evolution and cultural evolution thus goes all the way: all six principles of biological evolution outlined in section 2 are also thought to apply to cultural evolution, in some form. However, there is debate on whether a genotype-phenotype distinction applies to memetics. Dawkins claimed that this distinction does not hold in memetics, because selective pressures operate directly on memes. Memes are like genes that carry phenotypic traits on their sleeves. Memetic evolution on this conception is Lamarckian, because it upholds the heritability of acquired traits (new memes). Others have claimed that a genotype-phenotype distinction is tenable for memes. If memes are ideas in the mind, then their phenotypic expression may be a realization or manifestation of this idea. This phenotypic expression may be an artifact or behavior. For example, a recipe for a cake in someone’s mind is a set of memes, and a cake baked according to this recipe the memetic phenotype. Likewise, the remembered idea of a song may be a set of memes, while the performance of a song is the phenotype. On this view, selective pressures do not operate directly on memes, but indirectly, on their phenotypic expressions. In this debate, Aunger largely follows Dawkins’s idea that memes are both genotypic and phenotypic. He moreover holds that memes are brain structures, or ideas in the brain.