The rant about "meme" being a stupid idea that I mentioned near the end of Monday's Dawkins post turns out to be from Mike the Mad Biologist, who reposted it yesterday. Executive summary:
The word doesn't add much, obscures important phenomena, is imprecise, and is vitalistic.
I'm sure you were dying to know this, but I'm posting the link here as much so I can find it again if I need it as because you really ought to read it.
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Sure, "idea" is a good word. But it is not synonymous with "meme." Mad Mike's rant is a crappy swipe at a caricature, and the meme concept is a really crappy example of Dawkins's writing on science.
I don't know how anyone can take memes seriously. At the very best they represent something else; and do a bad job of it. Many people have said that they are Dawkins's worst idea. I agree, and wish people would shut up about them.
I guess by not taking them TOO seriously...
Can you explain WHY they are a bad idea? Better, can you do so without munging up the discussion with Dawkins's concepts of genes or his conclusions regarding religions? Because nobody in these threads has managed it yet, in my opinion.
I like the word "meme". I like to use it exactly the way Mike the Mad Biologist describes as Dawkins' use of it, in a discussion of cultural evolution. "Idea" does not cut it as a substitute. An institution can be a meme. So can any way of doing things. Cultural evolution doesn't occur in people's heads. The survival and growth of memes occurs in the culture, not in people's heads necessarily. It doesn't have to be something intellectual that drives cultural evolution. It just has to work for people so that people keep promoting this meme. That's more than I can express with "idea".
I suppose the problem is that people don't talk about cultural evolution that much. But if they did, I would find "meme" definitely more useful than "idea".