The Meme Machine by Susan J. Blackmore

What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 study The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, and ways of plowing a field, throwing a baseball, or making a sculpture. It is also one of the most important--and controversial--concepts to emerge since Darwin's Origin of the Species.

Here, Blackmore boldly asserts: "Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of memetic selection." Indeed, The Meme Machine shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began: a survival of the fittest among competing ideas and behaviors. Those that proved most adaptive--making tools, for example, or using language--survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced. Applying this theory to many aspects of human life, Blackmore brilliantly explains why we live in cities, why we talk so much, why we can't stop thinking, why we behave altruistically, how we choose our mates, and much more. With controversial implications for our religious beliefs, our free will, and our very sense of "self", this provocative book will be must reading any general reader or student interested in psychology, biology, or anthropology.

Over a decade ago, Richard Dawkins, who contributes a foreword to this book, coined the term "meme" for a unit of culture that is transmitted via imitation and naturally "selected" by popularity or longevity. Dawkins used memes to show that the theory known as Universal Darwinism, according to which "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities," applies to more than just genes. Now, building on his ideas, psychologist Blackmore contends that memes can account for many forms of human behavior that do not obviously serve the "selfish gene." For example, a possible gene-meme co-evolution among early humans could have selected for true altruism among humans: people who help others (whether or not they are related) can influence them and thus spread their memes. Meme transmission would also explain some thorny problems in sociobiology. From a gene's point of view, celibacy, birth control and adoption are horrible mistakes. From a meme's point of view, they are a gold mine. Few or no children free up the meme-carrier to devote more energy to horizontal transmission to non-relatives (monks and nuns the world over figured that out long ago), something the gene is incapable of. With adoption, memes can even co-opt vertical transmission between generations. Blackmore posits that, in modern culture, meme replication has almost completely overwhelmed the glacially slow gene replication. Well written and personable, this provocative book makes a cogentAif not wholly persuasiveAcase for the concept of memes and for the importance of their effects on human culture.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Richard Dawkins gave us ``memes,'' the cultural analogue of genes; Blackmore gives us memes in spadeshumans as meme machines. For Dawkins (who writes a foreword to this volume), the meme is a metaphor for the ideas, myths, customs, works of art and science that are passed along in human cultures as unitary and competing entities. In Blackmores formulation, they have become real and serve as an explanatory tool par excellence. Selfish memes, like selfish genes, are interested in their own perpetuation and so, in tail-wagging-the-dog fashion, have guided natural selection (via genes) to favor big brains, development of language, religion, sexual selection, altruism, urbanization, etc. The operation that makes all this memetic evolution possible is the human ability to imitate. In some ways, it's entertaining to follow Blackmore's train of thoughteven anticipating how she can shape memes to show why we like to gossip or why we love sex. She's a good writer, and her enthusiasm is infectious (like the memes themselves, which she and other memeticists liken to viruses). But in the end, one is left with reasonable questions: Is that all there is to life? Where is the proof? In many instances, the ``evidence'' is speculative or laid out as a predictive proposal. The author, a lecturer in the School of Psychiatry at the University of the West in England, even denies the existence of ``self''hence the title. But, clearly, not everything humans do or think comes by way of imitation. Humans are products of variation and chance, mutations, climate, disasters, and moments of opportunity. To counter all this by saying that there are more memes ``out there'' competing for a place in human brains borders on the magical or mystical. So, enjoy the imaginative leaps and some pithy summaries of current theories and controversies regarding human evolution, but don't substitute the meme bathwater for the gene baby just yet. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory - Edited by Slavoj Zizek

“The texts selected here present the entire scope of the Lacan debate, from the late 1970s through the present. Focusing on the four principal domains of Lacan’s influence–psychoanalytic theory and practice, philosophy, social sciences, and cultural studies, this set includes a new introduction by Zizek and a thorough index.

Jacques Lacan (1901-1980) is undoubtedly the central figure of psychoanalysis in the second half of the 20th century. He not only revolutionized the psychoanalytic practice, but in his 'return to Freud', he also deployed a global reinterpretation of the entire structural linguistics and semiotics.
The influence of Lacan's work is widespread. It gave rise to passionate discussions not only in France, but also in the UK, US, Germany, Italy, Latin America, Japan and Eastern Europe, stretching beyond the field of psychoanalysis itself, to philosophy, the social sciences and cultural studies.

Contents


Volume I: Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice
1. Jacques-Alain Miller Paradigms of Jouissance, lacanian Ink 17 pp. 10-47 [2000]
2. Jacqueline Rose The Imaginary, in Colin McCabe, ed., The Talking Cure pp. 132-161 [St. Martin's Press, 1981]
3. Martin Thom The Unconscious Structured as a Language, in Colin McCabe, ed., The Talking Cure pp. 1-44 [St. Martin's Press, 1981]
4. Moustapha Safouan In Praise of Hysteria, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 55-60 [Yale UP, 1980]
5. Gerard Wajeman The Hysteric’s Discourse Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes:Special Issue) pp. 1-22 [1988]
6. Michel Silvestre Conducting the Hysteric’s Cure Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes:Special Issue) pp. 23-33 [1988]
7. Darian Leader, Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post pp. 123-159 [Faber and Faber, 1996]
8. Charles Mehlman On Obsessional Neurosis, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 130-138 [Yale UP, 1980]
9. Jacques-Alain Miller H20:Suture in Obsessionality Hystoria (Lacan Study Notes:Special Issue) pp. 34-44 [1988]
10. Octave Mannoni Je sais bien, mais quand meme Clefs pour l’imaginaire pp. 9-33 [Editions du Seuil, 1968]
11. Jean Clavreuil The Perverse Couple, in Stuart Schneiderman, ed., Returning to Freud pp. 215-233 [Yale UP, 1980]
12. Jacques-Alain Miller On Perversion, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminars I and II pp. 306-320 [SUNY Press, 1996]
13. Serge Leclaire, Psychoanalyzing:On the Order of the Unconscious and the Practice of the Letter, Chapters 5 and 7 [Stanford UP, 1998]
14. Jean Laplanche Interpretation between Determinism and Hermeneutics:a Restatement of the Problem Essays on Otherness pp. 138-165 [Routledge, 1999]
15. Anne Dunand The End of Analysis, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminar XI pp. 243-256 [SUNY Press, 1995]
16. Kirsten Hyldgaard The Cause of the Subject as an Ill-timed Accident:Lacan, Sartre and Aristotle Umbr(a):A Journal of the Unconscious pp. 67-80 [2000]
17. Bruce Fink The Subject and the Other’s Desire, in Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus, eds., Reading Seminars I and II pp. 76-97 [SUNY Press, 1996]
18. Jean-Claude Milner The Doctrine of Science Umbr(a):A Journal of the Unconscious 2000:Science and Truth pp. 33-63

Volume II: Philosophy
19. Mladen Dolar Cogito as the Subject of the Unconscious, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 11-40 [Duke UP, 1998]
20. Alain Badiou Descartes/Lacan Umbr(a):A Journal of the Unconscious 1996:On Badiou pp. 13-16 21. Bernard Baas Le desir pur Ornicar?, No 43, pp. 56-91 [1987]
22. Alenka Zupancic The Subject of the Law, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 41-73 [Duke UP, 1998]
23. Joan Copjec Euthanasia of Reason Read My Desire:Lacan against the Historicists pp. 201-236 [The MIT Press, 199X]
24. Slavoj Zizek Cogito and the Sexual Difference Tarrying With the Negative pp. 45-80 [Duke UP, 1993]
25. Richard Boothby Figurations of the Objet a, Freud as Philosopher pp. 241-280 [Routledge, 2001]
26. Edward S. Casey and J. Melvin Woody Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan:The Dialectic of Desire, in Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan, eds., Interpreting Lacan pp. 75-112 [Yale UP, 1973]
27. Hermann Lang Language and Finitude Language and the Unconscious. Lacan’s Hermeneutics of Psychoanalysis pp. 135-177 [Humanities Press, 1999]
28. Gilles Deleuze The Logic of Sense pp. 27-48 [Columbia UP, 1990]
29. Barbara Johnson The Frame of Reference:Poe, Lacan, Derrida, in John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, eds., The Purloined Poe pp. 457-505 [Johns Hopkins UP, 1988]
30. Jean-Claude Milner, For the Love of Language, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 [MacMillan, 19XX]

Volume III:Society, Politics, Ideology
31. Fredric Jameson Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan The Ideologies of Theory. Essays 1971-1986, Vol. 1 pp. 75-115 [Minnesota UP, 1988]
32. Louis Althusser Freud and Lacan Writings on Psychoanalysis pp. 13-32 [Columbia UP, 1996]
33. Mladen Dolar Lacan and the Uncanny October 58 pp. 5-23 [1991]
34. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen The Freudian Subject:From Politics to Ethics The Emotional Tie pp. 15-35 [Stanford UP, 1992]
35. Gilbert D. Chaitin The Subject and the Symbolic Order:Historicity, Mathematics, Poetry Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan pp. 195-242 [Cambridge UP, 1996]
36. Henry Krips, Fetish:An Erotics of Culture pp. 73-117 [Cornell UP, 1999]
37. Eric Santner Freud’s Moses and the Ethics of Nomothropic Desire, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 57-105 [Duke UP, 2000]
38. Alain Grosrichard The Case of Polyphemus, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 117-148 [Duke UP, 1998]
39. Miran Bozovic An Utterly Dark Spot An Utterly Dark Spot pp. 95-120 [The University of Michigan Press, 2000]
40. Yannis Stavrakakis Encircling the Political Lacan And the Political pp. 71-98 [Routledge, 2000]
41. Ernesto Laclau Why do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics? Emancipation(s), pp. 36-46 [Verso Books, 1995]
42. Yannis Stavrakakis Laclau With Lacan Umbr(a):A Journal of the Unconscious pp. 134-153 [2000]
43. Slavoj Zizek Che vuoi? The Sublime Object of Ideology pp. 87-129 [Verso Books, 1989]
44. Robert Pfaller Negation and Its Reliabilities:An Empty Subject for Ideology?, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Cogito and the Unconscious pp. 225-246 [Duke UP, 1998]
45. Jerry Aline Flieger Is Oedipus On-line?, in Pretexts:studies in writing and culture, Vol. 6 No 1, pp. 81-94 [1997]

Volume IV:Culture
46. Jacques-Alain Miller Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 24-34 [1977/78]
47. Alain Badiou Complementary Note On a Contemporary Usage Of Frege Umbr(a):A Journal of the Unconscious 2000:Science and Truth pp. 107-113 [Buffalo]
48. Jean-Pierre Oudart Cinema and Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 35-47 [1977/78]
49. Stephen Heath Notes on Suture Screen Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 48-76 [1977/78]
50. Alain Badiou What Is Love?, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 263-281 [Duke UP, 2000]
51. Alenka Zupancic The Case of the Perforated Sheet, in Renata Salecl, ed., Sexuation pp. 282-296 [Duke UP, 2000]
52. Mladen Dolar The Object Voice, in Renata Salecl and Slavoj Zizek, eds., Gaze and Voice as Love Objects pp. 7-31 [Duke UP, 1996]
53. Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema pp. 17-57 [Columbia UP, 1999]
54. Mary Ann Doane Sublimation and the Psychoanalysis of the Aesthetic <
i>Femmes Fatales pp. 249-267 [Routledge, 1991] 55. Pascal Bonitzer Hitchcockian Suspense, in Slavoj Zizek, ed., Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock) pp. 13-30 [Verso Books, 1992]
56. Richard Maltby A Brief Romantic Interlude, in David Bordwell and Noel Carroll, eds., Post-Theory pp. 13-30 [The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996]
57. Gerard Wajcman The Absence of the 20th Century Lacanian Ink 18 pp. 60-79 [2001]
58. Michel Poizat, The Angel’s Cry:Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, Part II, chapter 2 (“Entre parole, cri et silence”) [Cornell UP, 1992]
59. Jacqueline Rose Daddy The Haunting of Sylvia Plath pp. 205-238 [Virago, 1991]
60. Alenka Zupancic Lacan’s Heroines:Antigone and Sygne de Coufontaine New Formations, No. 35, pp. 108-121 ”

Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times

Thomas Kuhn (1922-96) is known best, and almost exclusively, for a slim volume published in 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The book is widely acclaimed to be the most influential academic work of the second half of the 20th century. It has sold nearly a million copies and has been translated into 20 languages. With undiminished regularity, it is cited by scholars in fields as diverse as political science and art history. Al Gore has mentioned Structure as his favorite book.
I read Structure in 1964, in its first paper edition, and like many of my scientific cohort I was much taken by Kuhn's analysis of science. To be sure, the sources of Kuhn's thought were in the air at the time: Piaget's work on how children acquire knowledge, Whorf's studies of language and worldviews, Gestalt psychology, Koyré's groundbreaking interpretations of the history of science, and so on. It was a heady time to be thinking about the history and philosophy of science, and Kuhn plugged into the prevailing culture with uncanny precision.
According to Kuhn, the authority of science resides in the community of scientists practicing what he called "normal science." Normal science is defined by a "paradigm," a kind of shared worldview, or, as Kuhn described it, "universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners." Within normal science, anomalies are generally ignored. Eventually, however, difficulties within a paradigm become unsustainable, and a revolution occurs. A new paradigm is established, incorporating social and cultural influences of the time, and work goes on.
What Kuhn had going for him (or against him) was a dazzlingly simple schematic (with that magic word "paradigm") embedded in an inchoate epistemic stew. This made him easy to latch onto by almost anyone, regardless of philosophical or political predilections. Indeed, Kuhn has been taken to heart by scholars espousing almost directly opposite views about the nature of science. Combatants on both sides of the infamous "science wars" between scientists and sociologist critics of science regularly use Kuhn to buttress their respective positions or whack each other over the head.
Now along comes Steve Fuller to put Kuhn into a historic and philosophical context and to excoriate Structure for its presumed baleful influence on the authority and practice of science. Fuller is an American sociologist, currently professor at the University of Warwick, formerly of the University of Durham. His prolonged British residence is evidenced in the scrappy, iconoclastic, take-on-all-comers spirit of his work (one can find Fuller giving and taking his licks in the Internet lists). Nothing here of the sometimes wearisome pomposity of American academics who inhabit that obfuscated discipline called science studies.
Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times is a heavily footnoted and almost impenetrably dense insider's account of 20th-century sociology of knowledge. Fuller marshals an astonishingly detailed grasp of recent intellectual history to argue that science as we know it has outlived its usefulness. The paradigms of normal science are not the ideal form of science, he says, but rather "an arrested social movement in which the natural spread of knowledge is captured by a community that gains relative advantage by forcing other communities to rely on its expertise to get what they want."
Fuller is especially effective at reconstructing the debates between Ernst Mach and Max Planck about the nature of science at the beginning of the 20th century, which he takes as emblematic of all such debates since. In Fuller's dichotomous scheme, Mach championed an instrumentalist philosophy of science; Planck was a realist. Mach lodged science in everyday psychological experience; Planck reduced everyday experience to the ultimate constituents of physics. Mach exalted technology; Planck promoted abstract problem solving. Mach was the liberal democrat, intent on empowering "citizen scientists"; Planck was the state corporatist, who thought ordinary folks had no claim on "real" science.
Kuhn is squarely on the side of Planck, Fuller says. The paradigms of normal science, Fuller goes on to assert, confer a phony legitimacy and autonomy on scientific practice. Alternative versions of the "truth" are delegitimized, and establishment science (with its consumerist-military alliances) becomes the only game in town. Young scientists are acculturated within the paradigm and spend the rest of their careers tweaking theories. Dissent is frowned upon. The real problems of society are ignored in the pursuit of the next decimal place.
Fuller, of course, comes down on the side of Mach, espousing a vaguely defined "citizen science." His democratizing instincts are admirable, but as he storms the Bastille of normal science he will find himself in the teeming company of those who believe in creationism, alien abductions, parapsychology and other nonparadigmatic citizen sciences. He does not seem to cringe at the prospect of postestablishment intellectual anarchy.
Kuhn wrote: "The very existence of science depends upon vesting the power to choose between paradigms in the members of a special kind of community." Fuller has confidence in the intelligent good sense of ordinary folks and properly calls for "the right to be wrong." But do statements such as "the universe is light-years wide," "the earth is billions of years old," "all life is related by common descent," "organisms are composed of cells that contain double-helix DNA," and so on really have no greater claim on "reality" than the Genesis stories of creationists or the popular consolations of astrology? If the answer is no, as Fuller comes dangerously close to asserting, then most scientists would throw in the towel and get jobs flipping burgers.
Fuller underestimates the highly evolved "fitness" of the methodologies, sociologies and conceptual paradigms of normal science. The deprofessionalization of science and the establishment of a citizen marketplace of ideas are not likely to happen without the sociopolitical equivalent of an asteroid impact, and no such potential upheaval looms on our intellectual radar screens. Certainly, science studies lacks the weight to do it.
At the same time, it would behoove scientists to pay close attention to Steve Fuller's sprawling, brawling and gloriously provocative book. He is perhaps more friend than enemy, and by nipping at our heels he reminds us that science might in fact do a better job serving a socially and ecologically responsible agenda, empowering citizen science-kibitzers to live purposefully and with exalted spirit in the science-revealed world of galaxies and DNA.
CHET RAYMO teaches physics at Stonehill College in Massachusetts and is a science columnist for the Boston Globe.