Looking at the richness and complexity of life on Earth, Dawkins realised that genes alone were simply not enough to explain evolution from the simplest forms to the complexity of man, his culture and societal organisation. So he applied a Darwinian view to culture as well. Dawkins argued for the concept of memes - ideas that are "viruses to the brain", analogous to viruses that affect a PC. Memes are to culture what genes are to biology. A meme for, say, astrology, could parasitize a mind just as surely as a hookworm could infest someone's bowels. Ideas - like genes - can compete and cooperate, mutate and conserve, by some form of natural selection.
Created on ... juillet 17, 2003