2 ms·
Memetics was influenced by him, since he coined the term, but it's hardly a "field" in the same sense as Computer Science! In writing his book, Dawkins ignored
by akamaka 17y ago
Memetics was influenced by him, since he coined the term, but it's hardly a "field" in the same sense as Computer Science!
In writing his book, Dawkins ignored the last 2000+ years of scholarship on the nature of ideas, and influenced a tiny group of academics who are completely isolated from any other form of philosophy.
The Journal of Memetics (which was the only one of its kind) ceased publishing in 2005.
- scott_s 17y agoDawkins never wrote a book on memes. He wrote a book on evolution at the genetic level, The Selfish Gene. In it, he drew a comparison to genes that replicate themselves using organisms as a vehicle to ideas that replicate themselves using humans as a vehicle. It was a throw-away comparison, not the point of the book. But, the term "meme" is a good meme, and it caught on.
- Adlai 17y agoThe point isn't that he started a "field". The point is that Dawkins's ideas about selfish/cooperative genes (and the extensions of those ideas to the very idea of ideas themselves) have given rise to new directions in biology (and philosophy, in the case of memes).