Overview

First coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), memes are ideas, behaviours, or skills that are transferred from one person to another by imitation. With a foreword by Dawkins, this should become the definitive inaugural book on the burgeoning science of memetics. Starting with a clear definition of the meme it applies the principles of general evolutionary theory to understanding memetic selection. This book is intended for general public, academic psychologists, biologists, anthropologists.

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9780198503651

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Reviews

Richard Dawkins gave us memes, the cultural analogue of genes; Blackmore gives us memes in spades - humans as meme machines. For Dawkins (who writes a foreword to this volume), the meme is a metaphor for the ideas, myths, customs, works of art and science that are passed along in human cultures as unitary and competing entities. In Blackmore's formulation, they have become real and serve as an explanatory tool par excellence. Selfish memes, like selfish genes, are interested in their own perpetuation and so, in tail-wagging-the-dog fashion, have guided natural selection (via genes) to favor big brains, development of language, religion, sexual selection, altruism, urbanization, etc. The operation that makes all this memetic evolution possible is the human ability to imitate. In some ways, it's entertaining to follow Blackmore's train of thought - even anticipating how she can shape memes to show why we like to gossip or why we love sex. She's a good writer, and her enthusiasm is infectious (like the memes themselves, which she and other memeticists liken to viruses). But in the end, one is left with reasonable questions: Is that all there is to life? Where is the proof? In many instances, the evidence is speculative or laid out as a predictive proposal. The author, a lecturer in the School of Psychiatry at the University of the West in England, even denies the existence of self - hence the title. But, clearly, not everything humans do or think comes by way of imitation. Humans are products of variation and chance, mutations, climate, disasters, and moments of opportunity. To counter all this by saying that there are more memes out there competing for a place in human brains borders on the magical or mystical. So, enjoy the imaginative leaps and some pithy summaries of current theories and controversies regarding human evolution, but don't substitute the meme bathwater for the gene baby just yet. (Kirkus Reviews)

Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' in 1976, to refer to a cultural element that is passed on from person to person (or culture to culture) by imitation, or other non-genetic means. An idea such as the popular image of God as an old man with a long white beard could be regarded as a meme - so also could a popular song such as 'Yellow Submarine', or the concept of parliamentary democracy. Although the idea has penetrated popular culture (so that the meme concept is itself a meme), Blackmore has now provided the first popular account of what the whole meme idea might tell us about what it means to be human. A little more technical than Dawkins's own popularizations of the ideas of evolution, but still accessible. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Susan Blackmore is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of the West of England. The author of Dying to Live: Science and the Near Death Experience, she resides in Bristol, UK.

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