The Meme Machine

by Susan Blackmore

Overview

Humans are extraordinary creatures, with the unique ability among animals to imitate and so copy from one another ideas, habits, skills, behaviours, inventions, songs, and stories. These are all memes, a term first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Memes, like genes, are replicators, and this enthralling book is an investigation of whether this link between genes and memes can lead to important discoveries about the nature of the inner self. Confronting the deepest questions about our inner selves, with all our emotions, memories, beliefs, and decisions, Susan Blackmore makes a compelling case for the theory that the inner self is merely an illusion created by the memes for the sake of replication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191574610
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	03/16/2000
Series:	Popular Science
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Richard DawkinsPrefaceStrange creaturesUniversal DarwinismThe evolution of cultureTaking the meme's eye viewThree problems with memesThe big brainThe origins of languageMeme-gene co-evolutionThe limits of sociobiologyAn orgasm saved my lifeSex in the modern worldA memetic theory of altruismThe altruism trickMemes of the New AgeReligions as memeplexesInto the InternetThe ultimate memeplexOut of the meme raceReferencesIndex

Editorial Reviews

Memetics is that rarest of cultural phenomena-a loose philosophy in the process of transformation into genuine science. Such transformations are potentially the stuff of scientific revolution. We are fortunate indeed to have so lucid a guide to this strange, beguiling and still emerging intellectual landscape as Susan Blackmore.
— Portland Oregonian

James N. Gardner

"Well-written and personable, this provocative book makes a cognent...case for the concept of memes and for the importance of their effects on human culture."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher