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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on February 1, 2006
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2006 57(1):145-165; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi157
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Memes Revisited

Kim Sterelny

Philosophy Program, Victoria University of Wellington, and Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University Kim.Sterelny{at}vuw.ac.nz kimbo{at}coombs.anu.edu.au

In this paper, I argue that the adaptive fit between human cultures and their environment is persuasive evidence that some form of evolutionary mechanism has been important in driving human cultural change. I distinguish three mechanisms of cultural evolution: niche construction leading to cultural group selection; the vertical flow of cultural information from parents to their children, and the replication and spread of memes. I further argue that both cultural group selection and the vertical flow of cultural information have been important. More conjecturally, I identify a potential role for meme-based cultural evolution in the explanation of the ‘human revolution’ of the last 100 000 or so years, and defuse an important objection to that explanation.

  1. Introduction
  2. Cultural groups
  3. The cultural invention of adaptive complexes
  4. Niche construction models
  5. Dual inheritance
  6. Memes
  7. Memes or minds?
  8. Conclusion


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