The Meme Machine (Popular Science) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Dawkins himself wrote the Foreword to this book, giving it his enthusiastic endorsement, and providing some enlightening remarks about the origin of the meme concept. He concedes however, that his original intentions were quite a bit more modest, and that Blackmore has carried the concept further than he had envisioned.

The central thesis of this book is that imitation is what makes humans truly different from other animals, and what drives almost all aspects of human culture. A meme then, is a unit of imitation. Anything that can be passed from one person to another through imitation -- such as a song, a poem, a cookie recipe, fashion, the idea of building a bridge or making pottery -- is an example of a meme. From the meme's point of view, Blackmore claims, we humans are simply "meme machines", copying memes from one brain to another.

This book is highly speculative. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means the claims have not been proven scientifically. To Blackmore's credit she does clearly highlight the areas of speculation. She also points out the testable predictions made by her theory, and describes possible experiments that could be performed to validate or falsify them.

One such prediction is that specific neural mechanisms would be found in the brain that support imitation -- the key requirement for replication of memes. The recent discovery of mirror neurons seems to satisfy this prediction and provide a powerful validation of the theory.

This book is ambitious. It purports to be nothing less than a comprehensive scientific theory which answers such major scientific questions as the "big brain" problem, and the evolutionary origins of language, altruism, and religion -- all currently unresolved problems. Blackmore's presentation of these issues to be persuasive and insightful, though in some instances she has overstated her case. For example, while memes may have been a significant causal factor in the origin of language, it is not necessary to adopt a purely non-functional explanation for language.

The most controversial part of the book is likely to the last two chapters, where Blackmore discusses the concept of the "self", the real you which holds beliefs, desires, and intentions. Like Dennett, Blackmore believes the idea of a "self" is an illusion but unlike Dennett she does not see it as benign and a practical necessity. In her view, the illusion of the self (what she calls the "ultimate memeplex") obscures and distorts consciousness, and advocates adopting a Zen-like view to actively repel the self illusion.

After having read the book you may feel, that Blackmore has gone too far; that she has pulled some sleight-of-hand and come up with an outlandish conclusion. However, upon further reflection, the thoughtful reader will be forced to admit that Blackmore has made a forceful case and told at least a plausible, if not utterly convincing story.<P....

Despite the all-star cast of endorsements (Dennet and Dawkins) this book will mostly just succeed in making money for Blackmore, and perhaps spreading the idea of memes to new audiences that happen to think that Zen Buddhism is really groovey. In the mean time it may succeed in turning the idea of memes into the next new age fad - complete with prescriptions to free ourselves of the "tyranny" of the self - or as Blackmore the Zen guru might put it the "illusion of self".

The book gets off to a poor start by miscasting its basic philosophical questioning not in terms of memes, memetics, culture, or evolution, but by asking what is it that makes humans different from animals? Predictably asking poorly framed questions leads to conclusions that have even less to do with memes or memetics. Here I am referring to her incredible declarations which she makes central in the end of the book. We do not have selves, according to Blackmore. It's all a lie. Our memes have "tricked" us into thinking that we do - pesky li'l things. We should all become Zen Buddhists to save our non-selves from the memes!

I should hasten to add that along the way she makes many much less ridiculous and very good points. She provides some good behaviorist insight into true imitation, makes some interesting distinctions between that and social learning, and the roles that they play for memes. She provides some fertile ground for more applications of the genetic metaphor in her insightful distinctions between copying instructions vs. copying a product. She even makes some good cases for the role that such ideas like Platonic idealism play in memetic replication. All rich and worthwhile insights.

On the whole, I found her book to be very intelligent and entertaining, if deeply flawed in some fundamental respects. There were some useful insights definitely worth taking home, but there were other incredible flights of fantasy that I would have rather left behind. If you don't have your mind set on reading something in particular, this is an intriguingly good book - but it is far from being a seminal landmark in any scientific sense. If you are waiting for the book that will actually serve to make the case for the scientific legitimacy of memetics, save your money.

If you are interested in higher-quality peer-reviewed attempts at memetic theory without this irrelevant new-age fluff, I suggest you seek out a publication like the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transfer. There is better stuff out there even on the web other than the sources mentioned by Dawkins in his forward.

If you are interested in a good treatment of cultural evolution that does not deal in still- being-questioned words like "memes", and steers clear of new age fluff, I would recommend Gary Taylor's book "Cultural Selection" to balance Blackmore's more hype-ish approach.

-Jake

It is not disputed that genes are 'replicators' that make copies of themselves and compete with eachother for a continued existence. What makes this book shocking is its claim that there is a second replicator that dominates our existence (indeed, is partly responsible for it). Ideas spread themselves, and compete for a piece of the limited thought-space in our brains.

Is this just a clever way of explaining humankind's complex behavior, or is it something real?

A friend of mine argued that Meme's couldn't be "real" because they were just the manifestation of our physiology. To this I counter, does this mean that a sound wave is not "real", after all, it's just relative motion of a bunch of air molecules (or what ever medium the wave travels in). I don't want to get into philosophy, because I never see an end to these kinds of debates. But if Meme's aren't real, then I would suggest that gene's aren't real either because they are "just" a bunch of organic molecules (which are just comprised of atoms, which don't really exist, because they are just the manifested behavior of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which themselves are nothing more than...) which happen to get together in a stable form and cause other organic molecules to arrange themselves in the same fashion.... So, if you read the book, you'll see that this human's mind has been colonized by the Meme meme. Happy reading.