Culturgen (culture +-gen) is a term used to denote a theoretical 'unit' ofculture orcultural evolution. More specifically, analogous to agene, it is acultural artifact or element of behaviour whose repetition or reproduction is transmissible from onegeneration to the next. It has largely been displaced by the similar termmeme.[1]
The term was coined in 1980 by twoAmerican scientists—thebiomathematicianCharles J. Lumsden and thesociobiologistE. O. Wilson[2]—in a controversial attempt to analysecultural evolution by using techniques borrowed frompopulation genetics, to develop a comprehensive theory of how genes interact withcultural variation,[3] and toinfer a theory of the evolution of the human mind.
The fullest exposition of their theory appeared in their bookGenes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981),[4][5] which expanded upon the agenda that Wilson had laid out inSociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) andOn Human Nature (1978). In the book, the two assume that culturgens are stored inlong-term memory, are readily observable in theexternal world, and are to be transmitted viasocialization.[3]Genes, Mind, and Culture received many highly negative reviews in the scientific press, however;[4][5] it was re-issued in 2005 with a review of subsequent developments.[6]
It also effectively means much the same as the older termcultural trait used byanthropologists, and offers similar difficulties of identification and definition. The term has declined in popularity; the slightly older termmeme—coined byRichard Dawkins in his bookThe Selfish Gene (1976)—is now used in its stead,[1] almost universally (even by Wilson in his later writings).[citation needed]
