21+ Richard Dawkins Memes The Selfish Gene

Williams s adaptation and natural selection 1966.

Richard dawkins memes the selfish gene. The meme first appeared in richard dawkins first book the selfish gene 1976 and was an attempt to understand why some behaviours from an evolutionary perspective seemed to make no sense but somehow or other were found to be very common in human societies. Most people know that the word meme was coined by legendary evolutionary biologist richard dawkins in his seminal 1976 book the selfish gene what few realize however is that the vocal atheist and champion of evidence as the holy grail of life who even penned a children s book rebutting religious mythology with science had his first experience of a true meme decades before he had. I was approached by saatchi saatchi who had this idea of centring the event around the theme of memes so they asked if i would get involved and i was rather pleased with the idea. Learn more about the history of memes in this article. Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics but only on the existence of a self replicating unit of transmission in the case of biological. The term meme from the greek mimema meaning imitated was introduced in 1976 by british evolutionary biologist richard dawkins in his work the selfish gene. The word meme originated with richard dawkins 1976 book the selfish gene dawkins cites as inspiration the work of geneticist l.

Dawkins uses the term selfish gene as a way of expressing the gene centred view of evolution as opposed to the views focused on the organism and the group popularising ideas developed during the.