The meme machine /
Susan Blackmore.
- xx, 264 pages ; 20 cm
Originally published: 1999.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-258) and index.
Strange creatures -- Universal Darwinism -- Evolution of culture -- Taking the meme's eye view -- Three problems with memes -- Big brain -- Origins of language -- Meme-gene coevolution -- Limits of sociobiology -- 'An orgasm saved my life' -- Sex in the modern world -- Memetic theory of altruism -- Altruism trick -- Memes of the New Age -- Religions as memeplexes -- Into the Internet -- Ultimate memeplex -- Out of the meme race. ch. 1. ch. 2. ch. 3. ch. 4. ch. 5. ch. 6. ch. 7. ch. 8. ch. 9. ch. 10. ch. 11. ch. 12. ch. 13. ch. 14. ch. 15. ch. 16. ch. 17. ch. 18.
Uniquely among animals, humans are capable of imitation and so can copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviors, inventions, songs and stories. These are all memes, a term first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976. According to memetic theory, memes, like genes, are replicators, competing to get into as many brains as possible, and this memetic competition has fashioned our minds and culture, just as natural selection has designed our bodies. Can the analogy between memes and genes lead us to powerful new theories that actually explain anything important? This book ends by confronting the deepest questions of all about ourselves: the nature of the inner self, the part of us that is the centre of our consciousness, that feels emotions, has memories, holds beliefs and makes decisions. Author Blackmore contends that this inner self is an illusion, a creation of the memes for the sake of their own replication.--From publisher description.
019286212X 9780192862129
Memetics Imitation. Behavior evolution. Sociobiology. Social psychology.