I've read "Selfish gene" and browsed through alot of webpages (Principa Cybernetica, Journal of Memetics), what other good memetics resources do you know of?
I've read the Selfish Gene, and E.O. Wilson's Consilience, which touches upon the subject in sections. Consilience is an important book.
Most of my info so far has just been stuff on the net. I do have some memetic books on my To Be Read List:
The first one is endorsed by Richard Dawkins.
Thought Contagion - How Belief Spreads Through Society - Aaron Lynch
Virus of the Mind - The New Science of the Meme - Richard Brodie
Cultural Selection - Agner Fog
I've read Richard Brodie's Virus of the Mind, it's a good introduction to Memetics. Richard Brodie wrote with humour and often from the meme's point of view.
gmc: "The Extended Phonotype" also by Richard Dawkins is well worth a read. Apart from being a far more subtle rendering of his gene-centred analysis, the memetic perspective becomes a lot clearer when one really grasps the gene-centred perspective.
I've just started reading my first book on Memetics, it is called "The Meme Machine" By Susan Blackmore. It is very interesting so far, as I am not too familiar with the topic.
"Richard Dawkins, who popularized the notion that living organisms are simply carrying-cases that genes use to preserve and multiply themselves, also suggested that clusters of ideas, which he called "memes," similarly use human brains to survive. Bloom has taken this notion for a spin around the block. Just as genes care little for the fate of individuals and frequently promote behaviors that result in short, violent lives for individuals, so ideas drive people to war, revolution and communal strife in such a way as to promote the ideas' own distribution. The "Lucifer Principle" of the title is the thesis that history has been so bloody because ruthless "natural selection" applies to all levels of life, both the biological and the social."
gmc
jean-genie
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