Rating: 
Summary: A linguistic quirk of little value
Review: Susan Blackmore grips feverishly to Richard Dawkins' coattails and cites him as a memetic authority throughout this book. Dawkins tagged a few pages onto the end of The Selfish Gene (1976) to acknowledge that the gene can't go it alone. Then everyone went scooby ra-ra because they'd got a `scientific' explanation for human behaviour and culture. Well they hadn't! Even Dawkins has back peddled on the meme since 1976.Just because something is couched in scientific terminology doesn't mean that it's science. It seems perfectly plausible to accept that genes shape behaviour without having to invoke an analogous cultural equivalent to bridge the gaps left by the sociobiological perspective. As for challenging superstition and naïve humanism; the notion of a palpable, replicating unit of social transmission shaping behaviour is as plausible as astrological determinism. Blackmore ejects the chimera of the self and replaces it with the chimera of the meme. Raze subjectivity and consciousness if you feel that you must, but please replace them with something more plausible than the will-o-the wisp meme. There is nothing rigorous or systematic about ladling the concepts of biology onto social science without recognising the incommensurability of their respective subject matter. Without a definite empirical correlate the meme is a vacuous conceptual tool: the meme has no substantive foundation and never will. As there is no such thing as a meme, memeticists have had to expand memetic terminology to match the scope of the subject matter that they are attempting to explicate. The all-powerful meme isn't powerful enough so it had better be supplemented by memepools, memeplexes, surface-memes, deep-memes and so on. It has taken social sciences such as sociology over a century to develop an insular self-referential lexicon. In just over 25 years memetics has achieved the same thing. Well done Blackmore and co!
Rating: 
Summary: The Meme Machine
Review: Susan Blackmore's bold and fascinating book "The Meme Machine" pushes the new theory of memetics farther than anyone else has, including its originator Richard Dawkins. The reader should already be well-acquainted with the concepts of memes and Universal Darwinism before tackling this book. Those who are not would do well to first read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (and even better to also read Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea). Dawkins himself wrote the Foreword to this book, giving it his enthusiastic endorsement, and providing some enlightening remarks about the origin of the meme concept. He concedes however, that his original intentions were quite a bit more modest, and that Blackmore has carried the concept further than he had envisioned. The central thesis of this book is that imitation is what makes humans truly different from other animals, and what drives almost all aspects of human culture. A meme then, is a unit of imitation. Anything that can be passed from one person to another through imitation -- such as a song, a poem, a cookie recipe, fashion, the idea of building a bridge or making pottery -- is an example of a meme. From the meme's point of view, Blackmore claims, we humans are simply "meme machines", copying memes from one brain to another. This book is highly speculative. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means the claims have not been proven scientifically. To Blackmore's credit she does clearly highlight the areas of speculation. She also points out the testable predictions made by her theory, and describes possible experiments that could be performed to validate or falsify them. One such prediction is that specific neural mechanisms would be found in the brain that support imitation -- the key requirement for replication of memes. The recent discovery of mirror neurons seems to satisfy this prediction and provide a powerful validation of the theory. This book is ambitious. It purports to be nothing less than a comprehensive scientific theory which answers such major scientific questions as the "big brain" problem, and the evolutionary origins of language, altruism, and religion -- all currently unresolved problems. Blackmore's presentation of these issues to be persuasive and insightful, though in some instances she has overstated her case. For example, while memes may have been a significant causal factor in the origin of language, it is not necessary to adopt a purely non-functional explanation for language. The most controversial part of the book is likely to the last two chapters, where Blackmore discusses the concept of the "self", the real you which holds beliefs, desires, and intentions. Like Dennett, Blackmore believes the idea of a "self" is an illusion but unlike Dennett she does not see it as benign and a practical necessity. In her view, the illusion of the self (what she calls the "ultimate memeplex") obscures and distorts consciousness, and advocates adopting a Zen-like view to actively repel the self illusion. After having read the book you may feel, that Blackmore has gone too far; that she has pulled some sleight-of-hand and come up with an outlandish conclusion. However, upon further reflection, the thoughtful reader will be forced to admit that Blackmore has made a forceful case and told at least a plausible, if not utterly convincing story.
Rating: 
Summary: Piques the interest for a future science
Review: This book is a little too ambitious. Although Blackmore does not succeed in making the case for a science of memetics, she does a fantastic job trying to. With things like "Campbell's rule" and copying of instructions vs. copying of the product, she makes some good conceptual headway. She provides some good behaviorist insight on true imitation as a potential basis for memetic theory. The speculative field of memetics has yet to pull all the threads together, though Blackmore does a very good job setting the stage. I think the field as a whole could use a lot more immersion in cognitive science beyond the interesting forays of Daniel Dennett("Darwin's Dangerous Idea" highly recommended). I think the cognitive roles of language while not overlooked, could use more attention. In this vein I recommend to those interested to read "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, after you finish "The Meme Machine."The Meme Machine reads very well. It doesn't leave me seeing how memetics will get from here (speculative) to there (real science), but it leaves me thinking that there must be a way. Blackmore backs up her own ideas with some good scientific background, but doesn't lay any real empirical foundations for a science of memetics. I think until we have a better idea of the neurological organization underpinning our conceptual thinking that foundation will not appear. For some possible headway on that, again I suggest you read "Philosophy in the Flesh" after you read "The Meme Machine." I think perhaps both of these books may be converging on some similar problems from different perspectives. I think Blackmore sets some goals that are entirely too ambitious, and fails to achieve them. Instead of laying a foundation, she merely piques our interest. Don't let that stop you from enjoying "The Meme Machine." It is very interesting. Read this book. You will be glad that you did.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable eluicidation
Review: What is noteworthy about this book is how far it goes in extending memetics, without hysterically overvaluing it, and how very clear her elucidation of many abstruse evolutionary ideas were.
For her boldness and clairity, I give her five stars.
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