Design Issues: Volume 20, Number 4 Autumn 20044
Darwinian Design:
The Memetic Evolution
of Design Ideas
John Z. Langrish
Introduction
There seems to have been a recent slight increase in the number
of design papers with the word, “evolution” in their titles.
Unfortunately, these papers are either vague about what is meant
by this word, or they use the word in a non-Darwinian sense which
owes more to Spencer’s version of progressive evolution than to the
process of natural selection.
One interesting example is a paper by A. Can Ozcan, who
writes:
Let’s assume that the one we know as Darwin is born in our
times and he is very curious not about species but designed
objects and artifacts. Instead of looking at birds he is look-
ing at refrigerators, cars, kettles, microphones, bicycles. Our
number one question is whether he would come up with
similar principles of evolution like selection of the fittest
or progression from simplicity to complexity for designed
objects.1
My short answer to that question is an emphatic “No.” The longer
answer is that Charles Darwin did not come up with “principles of
evolution,” and if he had done so then progress towards complexity
would not be one of them. The original full title of his great work
was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection—nothing
about “evolution.” In fact, the word “evolution” is only used once
in the first edition. He originally intended to call this work just
“Natural Selection,” and a Darwinian theory is one based on natural
selection—not on some inevitable force for progress.
The term “survival of the fittest” was used by Herbert
Spencer before Darwin was persuaded to copy it in later editions
of his work. The notion of progress from simple to complex is a key
part of Spencer’s evolution, but it does not correspond with what
we know. This paper suggests that Spencerian notions of progres-
sive evolution have dominated discussions of evolution in design,
and now it is time to examine what a Darwinian theory of design
evolution might look like. Darwin, of course, did not know anything
about genes, genetics, or mutation. The term neo-Darwinism is used
1 A. Can Ozcan, An Evolutionary
Approach for Design—Contradictory
or Complementary with History (3rd
International Conference on Design
History and Design Studies, Istanbul,
2002.)
© 2004 John Z. Langrish
A version of this paper was presented to a
History and Theory of Design conference
sponsored by the Neohellenic Research
Institute and the Design Research Society
(Syros, July 2003). Its original title was “The
Evolution of Design Ideas—Memetic not
Progressive.”

Design Issues: Volume 20, Number 4 Autumn 2004 5
to mean Darwin’s natural selection plus genes. It is not suggested
that design is somehow genetic. Design evolution is the evolution
of ideas, and the Darwinian evolution of ideas is called “memetics”
from the concept of self-replicating ideas called memes by Richard
Dawkins.2
Four Arguments Against Evolutionary Design
A good example of the way in which design historians equate evolu-
tion with Spencerian notions of progress is provided by Adrian
Forty’s Objects of Desire.3
In his otherwise excellent attempt to tackle the problem of
why artifacts are the way they are, Forty dismisses evolutionary
explanations of change on the following grounds:
Historians of design have often tried to get around the
problem [of explanations involving creative individuals]
by attributing the changes to some sort of evolutionary
process, as if manufactured goods were plants or animals.
Changes in design are described as if they were mutations
in the development of products, stages in a progressive
evolution towards their most perfect form. But artifacts do
not have a life of their own, and there is no evidence for a
law of natural or mechanical selection to propel them in the
direction of progress. The design of manufactured goods
is determined not by some internal genetic structure but
by the people and the industries that make them and the
relationships of these people and industries to the society in
which the products are to be sold.3
Forty has four arguments against what he calls evolution. They may
be good arguments against vague ideas of Spencerian evolution, but
they are not valid arguments against Darwinian change. His four
arguments are:
1. The progress argument. This has nothing to do with
Darwinian change, but Forty does not restrict himself to the progress
towards complexity mistake: he adds the astonishing “a progressive
evolution towards their most perfect form.” There is no such thing
as a perfect mammal, perfect kettle, perfect car, or perfect tree. In all
cases, they exist as different varieties which have to fit into different
environments. “Progressive evolution towards a perfect form” is an
example of what Ernst Mayr refers to as “finalism” or “the belief that
the living world has the propensity to move towards ever greater
perfection.” According to Mayr, supporters of finalism “postulated
the existence of some built in force... but Darwin emphatically
rejected such obscure forces.” 4
2. “Artifacts do not have a life of their own.” This argument
is also known as the “machines don’t mate” argument. The short
answer to this is that the evolution of design ideas is the issue, and
that ideas do have a “life.”
2 Richard Dawkins, “Memes: The New
Replicators,” Chapter 11 in The Selfish
Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1976), 189–201.
3 Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire: Design
and Society Since 1750 (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1986), 8.
4 Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (London:
Basic Books, edition: Phoenix, 2001), 82.