The Meme MachineOxford University Press, 1999 - 264 pages What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, ways of plowing a field or throwing a baseball or making a sculpture. The meme is also one of the most important--and controversial--concepts to emerge since The Origin of Species appeared nearly 150 years ago. In The Meme Machine Susan Blackmore boldly asserts: "Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection." Indeed, Blackmore shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began, a survival of the fittest amongst competing ideas and behaviors. Ideas and behaviors that proved most adaptive--making tools, for example, or using language--survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced. Applying this theory to many aspects of human life, Blackmore offers brilliant explanations for why we live in cities, why we talk so much, why we can't stop thinking, why we behave altruistically, how we choose our mates, and much more. With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free will, our very sense of "self," The Meme Machine offers a provocative theory everyone will soon be talking about. |
Contents
Strange creatures | 1 |
Universal Darwinism | 10 |
The evolution of culture | 24 |
Copyright | |
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altruism trick analogy animals answer argue Baldwin effect believe benefit better biological coevolution complex consciousness copied created creatures Darwin Darwinian Dawkins Dennett effect environment evolutionary evolutionary algorithm evolutionary psychology evolved example experience explain fecundity fidelity high fidelity hominids horizontal transmission human brain idea imagine increase inside instructions invention kind language learning live longevity look mate Matt Ridley meme pool meme-driven memeplexes memes and genes memetic driving memetic evolution memetic selection mind modern natural selection neurons obvious passed person phenotype predictions primeval soup produce psychologist question reciprocal altruism religions second replicator selection pressure selfish Selfish Gene selfplex sense simple sleep paralysis social society sociobiology someone sounds soup species spreading memes story successful memes suggest survival Susan Blackmore talk theory things understand women words