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Articles

The Dragon: Memes, Culture and Evolution

In a follow-up to last issue’s focus on Darwin, we have two articles looking at memes, supposed ‘units of cultural transmission’. First, Daria Sugorakova explores the concept of memes by pondering how the idea of dragons evolved.

Culture makes Homo Sapiens a very special species. Cultural transmission may not be exclusively a human affair, since some other animals seem capable of it too, but the best examples of cultural evolution are human: clothing, ceremonies, paintings, books, architecture. Richard Dawkins argued in The Selfish Gene (1976) that we are survival machines which behave as if our only agenda were to replicate our genes. But he also said that “a new kind of replicator has recently emerged.” He calls this a meme, “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.

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