The Selfish Meme, SCIENCE
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The Selfish Meme
A Critical Reassessment
Culture is a unique and fascinating aspect of the human species.
How did it emerge and how does it develop? Richard Dawkins has
suggested that culture evolves and that memes are the cultural repli-
cators, subject to variation and selection in just the same way as genes
are in the biological world. In this sense human culture is the product
of a mindless evolutionary algorithm. Does this imply, as some have
argued, that we are mere meme machines and that the conscious self
is an illusion?
Kate Distin’s highly readable and accessible book extends and
strengthens Dawkins’s theory and presents for the first time a fully
developed and workable concept of cultural DNA. She argues that
culture’s development can be seen both as the result of memetic evo-
lution and as the product of human creativity. Memetic evolution
is perfectly compatible with the view of humans as conscious and
intelligent.
This book should find a wide readership amongst philosophers,
psychologists and sociologists, and it will also interest many nonaca-
demic readers.
Kate Distin is an independent scholar.
The Selfish Meme
A Critical Reassessment
KATE DISTIN
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