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14 statements · 36% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations
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12 identifiers linking memetics across the web's reference databases
14 statements · 36% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations
12 identifiers linking memetics across the web's reference databases
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Memetics, or the study of memes, is an emerging discipline in cultural evolution, based on the idea that culture can be reduced to the study of cultural units, called memes: ideas, behaviors, beliefs, and expressions that spread from person to person in a culture through imitation. The term "meme" was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, to illustrate the principle that he later called "Universal Darwinism". All evolutionary processes depend on information being copied, varied, and selected, a process also known as variation with selective retention. The conveyor of the information being copied is known as the replicator, with the gene functioning as the replicator in biological evolution. Dawkins proposed that the same process drives cultural evolution, and he called this second replicator the "meme", citing examples such as musical tunes, catchphrases, fashions, and technologies. Like genes, memes are selfish replicators and have causal efficacy; in other words, their properties influence their chances of being copied and passed on. Some succeed because they are valuable or useful to their human hosts while others are more like viruses.