The Selfish Meme A Critical Reassessment By KATE DISTIN free download

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Contents

 1 Introduction page 1

2 The Meme Hypothesis 6

3 Cultural DNA 18

4 The Replication of Complex Culture 39

5 Variation 48

6 Selection 57

7 The Story So Far 68

8 The Human Mind: Meme Complex with a Virus? 72

9 The Meme’s Eye View 92

10 Early Cultural Evolution 116

11 Memetic DNA 142

12 Memes and the Mind 168

13 Science, Religion and Society: What Can Memes Tell Us? 185

14 Conclusions 197

Acknowledgements 209

Notes 211

Bibliography 217

Index 225

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 replicators,

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 evolution

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 nonacademic

readers.

Kate Distin is an independent scholar.