28 Sep 2009
Science story -"The Meme"
In his 1976 book"The Selfish Gene", Richard Dawkins introduced the word"meme"which - like a gene - is an idea that replicates and undergoes natural selection, but forms the basis of cultural evolution rather than biological evolution. Matt Gers and Ben Jeffares from Victoria University agree that memes are a valid way of understanding change in culture, but they disagree on how complete the concept actually is.