Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of memes and their social and cultural effects.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy The study of memes and their social and cultural effects.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[meme + -etics (as in aesthetics).]

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Examples

  • The breakthrough in memetics is in extending Darwinian evolution to culture.

    un-meme 2005

  • Then, by dealing with those codes just like dealing in the human genome project with what we call memetics, which is simply a word for value systems, by dealing with the human memome, that is with these deeper world views, and focusing on them rather than surface level behaviors, then one has for the first time, I think, Steve, the insight in order to subdue and reduce some of our very serious problems at the surface level.

    iShift - Don Beck on the Essential Shifts (2006 Transcript) William Harryman 2009

  • The study of memes, known as memetics, "provides a valuable framework for understanding how culture, knowledge, beliefs and behaviors spread until they become an accepted part of life."

    Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Overcoming Supermemes: Insight to our Future Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater 2010

  • The study of memes, known as memetics, "provides a valuable framework for understanding how culture, knowledge, beliefs and behaviors spread until they become an accepted part of life."

    Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Overcoming Supermemes: Insight to our Future Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater 2010

  • This theory was given a particular form partly by Richard Dawkins, partly by some of his followers such as Susan Blackmore, between fifteen and twenty years ago: the theory of what's come to be called memetics, on the analogy of genetics.

    Archbishop's Holy Week Lecture: Faith & Science 2008

  • The Selfish Gene introduces the idea of memetics as a method of measuring the cultural evolution of ideas:

    Gamasutra Feature Articles 2010

  • The study of memes, known as memetics, "provides a valuable framework for understanding how culture, knowledge, beliefs and behaviors spread until they become an accepted part of life."

    The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater 2010

  • Consequently, the project of "memetics" as contending basis for evolutionary epistemology is on hold pending an adequate understanding of its basic ontology.

    Evolutionary Epistemology Bradie, Michael 2008

  • Robinson goes a bit further in pointing out that, while genetics and "memetics" are supposed to work in the same sort of way, the latter is actually seriously subversive of the former, in that it allows the brain to be "infected" with ideas that can overrule the genetic impulse.

    Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph 2010

  • Blackmore is best known for her theory of memetics.

    Why Science is Important Peggy 2009

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