The author claims that memes aren't "real", they're just an idea; yet ideas are exactly what memes are all about! The more attempts are made to justify the clai

The author claims that memes aren't "real", they're just an idea; yet ideas are exactly what memes are all about! The more attempts are made to justify the claim, the more clearly the evidence for memes piles up: ie. that memetics is a clear example of a meme! Some deliciously irony: > Since its introduction almost 40 years ago, the term has taken root in science, language, and popular culture. > Should we take the existence of memes on scientific faith, or countenance the parsimonious explanation that ideas are just ideas that we use for better or for worse? > There is no reason to invent a language or a science, or insert some entirely fictitious evolutionary notion, every time we have a question that seems unanswerable. > It sounds nice, and perhaps the meme is a useful analogy—but it is just an analogy. Dennet's favourite examples of memes are words. They're clearly "physically real", in that we can capture them with a microphone or a pen. We're nowhere near able to measure the neurological effect of a word on a brain, but we certainly know that the effect is there, since hearing words (eg. instructions) can alter our behaviour.