In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins proposed the concept of the
meme as a unit of culture, spread by imitation. Now Dawkins
himself says of Susan Blackmore: Showing greater courage and
intellectual chutzpah than I have ever aspired to, she deploys
her memetic forces in a brave--do not think foolhardy until you
have read it--assault on the deepest questions of all: What is a
self? What am I? Where am I? ... Any theory deserves to be given
its best shot, and that is what Susan Blackmore has given the
theory of the meme. Blackmore is a parapsychologist who rejects
the paranormal, a skeptical investigator of near-death
experiences, and a practitioner of Zen. Her explanation of the
science of the meme (memetics) is rigorously Darwinian. Because
she is a careful thinker (though by no means dull or
conventional), the reader ends up with a good idea of what
memetics explains well and what it doesn''t, and with many ideas
about how it can be tested--the very hallmark of an excellent
science book. Blackmore''s discuss