Memetics

I stumbled upon this interesting lecture delivered by Alister Mcgrath, responding to Dan Dennett's book "Breaking the Spell".

http://www.cis.org.uk/assets/files/Resources/Articles/Article-Archive/mcgrath_rs...

I was wondering in light of Dennett's book and Mcgrath's response, where people in this group stand with the study of Memes.

Thanks!!

The "meme hypothesis" has its problems; no doubt about it. But I don't think they're the ones that McGrath mentions. To even pose the question, "Do memes exist?" as McGrath does, is to fundamentally miss the point. Memes are purely instrumental constructs, like the concepts of justice, or beauty, or goodness. Nobody thinks that our failure to find scientific proof of the existence of beauty undermines beauty's existence. A "meme" is nothing more or less than a concept that is useful when referring to certain aspects of how ideas propagate themselves within a population.