The publication in 1998 of Susan Blackmore's bestselling 'The Meme Machine' re-awakened the debate over the highly controversial field of memetics. In the past few years, there has been an explosion of interest in 'memes'. The one thing noticeably missing has been any kind of proper debate over the validity of a concept regarded by many as scientifically suspect.
This book pits leading intellectuals, (both supporters and opponents of meme theory), against each other to battle it out, and state their case. With a forward by Daniel Dennett, and contributions form Dan Sperber, David Hll,...

From biology to culture to the new new economy, the buzzword on everyone's lips is "meme." How do animals learn things? How does human culture evolve? How does viral marketing work? The answer to these disparate questions and even to what is the nature of thought itself is, simply, the meme. For decades researchers have been convinced that memes were The Next Big Thing for the understanding of society and ourselves. But no one has so far been able to define what they are. Until now.

Here, for the first time, Robert Aunger outlines what a meme physically is, how memes originated, how they...