Meme

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As a first approximation, a meme is System behaviour that can be copied.

By copying concrete behaviour, a Behavioural Disposition gets transmitted between systems: “an idea, behaviour, style, or usage … spreads from person to person within a culture”.Merriam-Webster

Thus memes can be understood as transmittable behavioural dispositions.

This means memes are the units of Cultural Evolution. Importantly, and in deviation from the parallel with genesWhich is how Dawkins (1976) first introduced the concept.

, Cultural evolution is multilevel meme variation, selection and replication. Higher-level, complex memes are sometimes called Memeplexes.

When we understand memes as participants in evolution, we can take a “meme’s eye view”Blackmore (1999)

and treat the systems it is transmitted between as the Environment in which it survives and which it uses to do so. From this view, a meme is an Egregore.

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