Product Description

Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Bennet, and Richard Dawkins (as well as science buffs and readers of Wired Magazine) will revel in Aaron Lynchs groundbreaking examination of memeticsthe new study of how ideas and beliefs spread. What characterizes a meme is its capacity for displacing rival ideas and beliefs in an evolutionary drama that determines and changes the way people think. Exactly how do ideas spread, and what are the factors that make them genuine thought contagions? Why, for instance, do some beliefs spread throughout society, while others dwindle to extinction? What drives those intensely held beliefs that spawn ideological and political debates such as views on abortion and opinions about sex and sexuality?By drawing on examples from everyday life, Lynch develops a conceptual basis for understanding memetics. Memes evolve by natural selection in a process similar to that of Genes in evolutionary biology. What makes an idea a potent meme is how effectively it out-propagates other ideas. In memetic evolution, the fittest ideas are not always the truest or the most helpful, but the ones best at self replication. Thus, crash diets spread not because of lasting benefit, but by alternating episodes of dramatic weight loss and slow regain. Each sudden thinning provokes onlookers to ask, How did you do it? thereby manipulating them to experiment with the diet and in turn, spread it again. The faster the pounds return, the more often these people enter that disseminating phase, all of which favors outbreaks of the most pathogenic diets. Like a software virus traveling on the Internet or a flu strain passing through a city, thought contagions proliferate by programming for their own propagation. Lynch argues that certain beliefs spread like viruses and evolve like microbes, as mutant strains vie for more adherents and more hosts. In its most revolutionary aspect, memetics asks not how people accumulate ideas, but how ideas accumulate people. Readers of this intriguing theory will be amazed to discover that many popular beliefs about family, sex, politics, religion, health, and war have succeeded by their fitness as thought contagions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #319941 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Customer Reviews

Shallow & unconvincing
As a big fan of Dennett and Dawkins, not to mention E.O. Wilson, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately it doesn't live up to its interesting premise, mainly because the discussion of memes is so facile. Almost all the rather banal examples (from religion, sociology, etc.) could be explained by standard theories without invoking memes. And there's hardly any research to back up the big idea! Since it's trying to develop the "meme" idea it should've been a lot more substantial. Maybe Dawkins will eventually write a memetic opus?

Valuable Insights
Aaron Lynch is an ex-Fermilab physicist who co-independently discovered the meme in 1978, and has been researching memetics full-time since 1986. His work has been cited by Douglas Hofstadter as important, and he co-edits the online peer-reviewed 'Journal of Memetics'.

'Thought Contagion' is the first mainstream book published on this new science, and has some excellent early chapters on the history of memetics, and importantly, the relationship between memetics and other sciences such as socio-biology, epidemiology, and the social sciences. Lynch draws on the earlier work of Dawkins, Dennett, and Hofstadter to present a solid scientific model, which he has developed elsewhere via extensive mathematical proofs.

The presentation of propagation modes is more precise and scientific than a more populist evolutionary psychology/drives-hot button influenced work like Richard Brodie's 'Virus of the Mind' (Integral Press, 1996). Brodie has interestingly admitted that Lynch actually began his work before Brodie did, and that Lynch's book was stalled by a careful peer-review process (leaving aside the heated Brodie/Lynch debates on the future direction of memetics and its public presentation). The bibliography is also incredibly useful. Lynch's writing is crisp and clear, very readable but also very serious. Lynch wants to convince you, and often succeeds.

Where most memetics books become controversial is in their analysis of contemporary social issues. For many readers, the archetypal book on memetics is still to be written, but the science is still in its infancy, and has developed much over the past several years.

Lynch does an admirable job of examining a broad range of issues, from the prevalence of different forms of religious fundamentalism and talk-show/advocacy journalism politics to debates on human sexuality, drug addiction, and gun control. The latter are so hotly debated that Lynch is likely to come across sounding subdued compared to typical media hype. But this is a scientist talking rationally, not a journalist.

Lynch is at his best when he takes an indepth case-study approach, backing up his arguments with scientific data and graphs (a sample case-study on the Amish is presented in the opening chapter, and is available online). Readers are more likely to disagree with his handling of other issues, and not look at either his presentation, or how he subtly works thought contagion theory into his arguments. It takes several readings to appreciate his sections on linguistics and abstract mathematics as well.

Definitely worth reading, Lynch's book was the first to give a serious indication of the potential of memetics as a valid new science, and to hint at powerful social applications. Lynch continues to reveal and further develop his key models, important mathematical proofs, and real-world applications.

Keep looking, this is not the right book.
The book reads like the rambling essay exam answer of a C student. In the book Lynch provides a light pencil sketch of a fascinating topic without any depth or research to support his theories. As such Lynch sounds like the know-it-all at a cocktail party explaining the wonders of how the world works to whomever will listen. This book is in such extremely rough form that you will find your interest sagging in 50 pages or so. A few in-depth case studies coupled with some suporting research could have made an exciting book. Maybe he'll write that one later. Who knows? The fact is that a book about the transmission and evolution of belief systems should be a great read full of references to history, philosophy, literature, and religion. The book ignores the first three and burns through religion in 36 pages. That's just not enough effort to analyze Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in any but the most superficial way. It was like drinking from an empty glass. There was nothing to make you sit back and think, or mull over the implications of his theories.