- Hardcover: 286 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press; First Edition edition (Mar 1 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0198503652
- ISBN-13: 978-0198503651
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 16.3 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 635 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #943,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of the meme as a unit of culture, spread by imitation. Now Dawkins himself says of Susan Blackmore:
Showing greater courage and intellectual chutzpah than I have ever aspired to, she deploys her memetic forces in a brave--do not think foolhardy until you have read it--assault on the deepest questions of all: What is a self? What am I? Where am I? ... Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the theory of the meme.
Blackmore is a parapsychologist who rejects the paranormal, a skeptical investigator of near-death experiences, and a practitioner of Zen. Her explanation of the science of the meme (memetics) is rigorously Darwinian. Because she is a careful thinker (though by no means dull or conventional), the reader ends up with a good idea of what memetics explains well and what it doesn't, and with many ideas about how it can be tested--the very hallmark of an excellent science book. Blackmore's discussion of the "memeplexes" of religion and of the self are sure to be controversial, but she is (as Dawkins says) enormously honest and brave to make a connection between scientific ideas and how one should live one's life. --Mary Ellen Curtin
From Publishers Weekly
Over a decade ago, Richard Dawkins, who contributes a foreword to this book, coined the term "meme" for a unit of culture that is transmitted via imitation and naturally "selected" by popularity or longevity. Dawkins used memes to show that the theory known as Universal Darwinism, according to which "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities," applies to more than just genes. Now, building on his ideas, psychologist Blackmore contends that memes can account for many forms of human behavior that do not obviously serve the "selfish gene." For example, a possible gene-meme co-evolution among early humans could have selected for true altruism among humans: people who help others (whether or not they are related) can influence them and thus spread their memes. Meme transmission would also explain some thorny problems in sociobiology. From a gene's point of view, celibacy, birth control and adoption are horrible mistakes. From a meme's point of view, they are a gold mine. Few or no children free up the meme-carrier to devote more energy to horizontal transmission to non-relatives (monks and nuns the world over figured that out long ago), something the gene is incapable of. With adoption, memes can even co-opt vertical transmission between generations. Blackmore posits that, in modern culture, meme replication has almost completely overwhelmed the glacially slow gene replication. Well written and personable, this provocative book makes a cogentAif not wholly persuasiveAcase for the concept of memes and for the importance of their effects on human culture.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Are memes Science?,
By
This review is from: The Meme Machine (Paperback)
I happen to have read a few articles on memes before getting started with this book. After reading it, I still have this love hate relationship with the whole concept of memetics.At times, I find the concept enlightning. Ideas presented by Dr. Blackmore on gene/meme coevolution in shaping the human brain and in developing a language are the main strength of this book. Thinking about human culture as a group of memes that shape the thought of its members seems to make a lot of sense. But the question remains, does common sense equal Science? Obviously not. There is hardly any evidence that would substantiate the presence of memes as replicators. Maybe it would have been much more scientific to say that memes in human culture is an extension to the Baldwin effect. It could also be that memes "go off" sometimes and set selectional pressures on organisms reaching outcomes that would not be predicted by sociobiology and evolutionary pschycology. Until a biological correlate for memetics is found, memetics can only be regarded as a social theory. For it to make it into biology, alot of work should be done. However, if one day this replicator was found, Dawkins, Blackmore and Dennett will be Golden. Their memes would be immortalized in the cultures of generations to come.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
A linguistic quirk of little value,
By Dominic Ponder (Ashby de la Zouch, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Meme Machine (Paperback)
Susan Blackmore grips feverishly to Richard Dawkins' coattails and cites him as a memetic authority throughout this book. Dawkins tagged a few pages onto the end of The Selfish Gene (1976) to acknowledge that the gene can't go it alone. Then everyone went scooby ra-ra because they'd got a 'scientific' explanation for human behaviour and culture. Well they hadn't! Even Dawkins has back peddled on the meme since 1976.Just because something is couched in scientific terminology doesn't mean that it's science. It seems perfectly plausible to accept that genes shape behaviour without having to invoke an analogous cultural equivalent to bridge the gaps left by the sociobiological perspective. As for challenging superstition and naïve humanism; the notion of a palpable, replicating unit of social transmission shaping behaviour is as plausible as astrological determinism. Blackmore ejects the chimera of the self and replaces it with the chimera of the meme. Raze subjectivity and consciousness if you feel that you must, but please replace them with something more plausible than the will-o-the wisp meme. There is nothing rigorous or systematic about ladling the concepts of biology onto social science without recognising the incommensurability of their respective subject matter. Without a definite empirical correlate the meme is a vacuous conceptual tool: the meme has no substantive foundation and never will. As there is no such thing as a meme, memeticists have had to expand memetic terminology to match the scope of the subject matter that they are attempting to explicate. The all-powerful meme isn't powerful enough so it had better be supplemented by memepools, memeplexes, surface-memes, deep-memes and so on. It has taken social sciences such as sociology over a century to develop an insular self-referential lexicon. In just over 25 years memetics has achieved the same thing. Well done Blackmore and co!
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice place to start,
By dnalias (Darien, CT United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Meme Machine (Paperback)
For a readable and interesting expansion of Blackmore/Dawkins' meme theory called tenetics, see Ian McFadyen's Mind Wars!
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