Memetics

Memetics is the scientific approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme.

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In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that the meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the mutating replicator in human cultural evolution. It is a pattern that can influence its surroundings and can propagate. This created great debate among sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines, because Dawkins himself did not provide a sufficient explanation of how the replication of units of information in the brain controls human behavior and ultimately culture because the aformentioned book in which he presented the idea was principally concerned with genetics. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of memetics in The Selfish Gene, rather he coined the term meme in a speculative spirit. Accordingly, the term "unit of information" came to be defined in different ways by many scientists.

The Selfish Gene: The Selfish Gene is a controversial book by Richard Dawkins published in 1976. The phrase "selfish gene" in the title of the book was coined by Dawkins as a provocative way of expressing the gene-centered view of evolution, which holds that evolution can be viewed as acting on genes, and that selec...

Ethologist: Redirect ethology...

Richard Dawkins: Professor Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS (born March 26, 1941), better known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist and popular science writer. He is best known for popularising the Williams Revolution in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and being an outspoken atheist and humanist....