There is much written about memes that is confused and confusing. The following brief annotated bibliography provides some pointers to the most helpful and least confusing sources of ideas about memes. See also Links to other useful sites and
Sue Blackmore’s publications on memes.
Books on memes
Aunger, R.A. (Ed) (2000) Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, Oxford University Press (An excellent collection of papers based on a conference in Cambridge. Authors include Blackmore, Dawkins, Dennett, Plotkin, Sperber.)
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Aunger, R.A. (2002) The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. New York, The Free Press (Based on his idiosyncratic idea that memes are distinct patterns of electrical charges at nodes in the brain)
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Blackmore, S.J. (1999) The Meme Machine, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Extract Synopsis Reviews Translations
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Balkin, J.M (1998) Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology, Yale University Press
Bowker, J (1995) Is God a Virus?, London, SPCK
Boyer, P (2001) Religion Explained, New York, Basic Books
Brodie, R. (1996) Virus of the Mind: The new science of the meme. Seattle, WA, Integral press. (A popular book on memetics with lots of examples of infectious memes and how they affect our lives.)
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Dawkins, R. (1976) The Selfish Gene Oxford, Oxford University Press – also new edition with additional material, 1989. (The origin of the term “meme” and still very much worth reading, relevant chapter online)
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Dawkins, R. (1982) The Extended Phenotype. Oxford, Oxford University Press (a brief section on memes, proposes that the meme is information physically stored in the brain. This is sometimes known as “Dawkins B” because it differs from his earlier formulation)
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Dawkins, R. (2006) The God Delusion, Bantam Press. (Mostly a powerful onslaught on belief in God but with several sections on religions as memes)
Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston, Little, Brown (includes a very clear section on memes, minds and consciousness)
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Dennett, D. (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, London, Penguin (memes are considered within the context of evolutionary theory. A very clear explanation of the meme as a replicator.)
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Distin, Kate (2004) The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (good critical overview of memetics).
Durham, W.H. (1991) Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity. Stanford, Ca.,Stanford University Press. (a difficult book but includes clear accounts of several theories of meme-gene co-evolution)
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Fog, Agner (1999) Cultural Selection, Kluver (in depth and full of examples, much of it available online).
Godin, Seth (2000) Unleashing the Ideavirus, Simon & Schuster Ltd, New Ed Edition (2 Jan 2002)
Hofstadter, D. (1985) Metamagical Themas: Questing for the essence of mind and pattern. N.Y. Basic Books (includes an interesting section on viral sentences and self-replicating structures)
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Hull, David (1990) Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science, University of Chicago Press
Hurley, S and Chater, N (2005) Perspectives on Imitation: From Mirror Neurons to Memes. MIT Press, 2 volumes (based on a conference, contributions from nearly 50 authors, including Blackmore, Byrne, Decety, Donald, Gallese, Humphrey, Meltzoff, Tomasello and Whiten)
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Jan, S. (2007) The Memetics of Music: A neo-Darwinian view of musical structure and culture Aldershot, UK, Ashgate
Lynch,A. (1996) Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society. N.Y. Basic Books. (this book includes many interesting examples of powerful memes)
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McGrath, Alister E. (2004) Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, Oxford, Blackwell
Stanovich, K.E. (2004) The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin, Chicago, University of Chicago Press (how we, the vehicles, can rebel against the genes and memes that made us). See forthcoming review
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Other languages
Chinese: Xie, Chaoqun, Ziran He and Blackmore, S. (2007) Memes misunderstood. Comments on Liu (2006). Foreign Language Education 28(3):11-15.
French: Blackmore, S. (2006) La théorie des mèmes, Paris, Max Milo
French: Pascal Jouxtel (2005) Comment les systèmes pondent : Une introduction à la mémétique
Paris, Le Pommie
Spanish: Ramirez, A.C. (2004) Genes y memes: Una aproximacion a la teoria memetica de la evolucion cultural. Ediciones Taller Abierto, Mexico.
Polish: Biedrzycki, Mariusz (1998) Genetyka kultury, ISBN 83-7180-347-8. I’ve been recommended this as the best polish book on memetics.
My TED talk is podcast in English, with subtitles in a choice of 21 other languages.
Scientific articles on Memes / Tremes by Susan Blackmore
Blackmore, S.J. 2003 Consciousness in Meme Machines. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 4-5, 19-30 WORD PDF
Evolution and memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device. Cybernetics and Systems, 32, 225-255. 2001
Italian translation Blackmore S. (2003), “I memi e lo sviluppo del cervello”, in KOS 211, aprile 2003, pp. 56-64.
German translation Blackmore S. (2003) “Evolution und Meme: Das menschliche Gehirn als selektiver Imitationsapparat.”.
Bull,L., Holland,O. and Blackmore,S. 2000 On meme-gene coevolution. Artificial Life, 6, 227-235
Blackmore,S.J. 1999 Meme machines and consciousness, Journal of Intelligent Systems, 9, 355-376 abstract
Popular Articles on Memes / Tremes by Susan Blackmore
The third replicator, Debate in the New York Times, 22 August 2010
Natural selection applies to everything. New Humanist, May, June 2006, 23-24
Memes, Creativity and Consciousness. Aesthetica, May, June, July 2006 Issue 13, 50
The power of memes. Scientific American, 283:4, 52-61, 2000. Also response to letters to the editor, Scientific American, 284:2, 10 Also translated into Russian
Meme, myself, I. New Scientist, 13 March, 40-44, 1999
Articles on Memes by other Authors:
The best source of articles on memes and tremes is Memetics publications on the web, though it has not been updated for some time. So I am beginning to create a list here. Any suggestions welcome.
Conley, J.P., Toossi A and Wooders, M. (2006) Memetics and voting: how nature may make us public spirited, International Journal of Game Theory, 35, 71-90 Link to article
McNamara, A. (2011) Can we measure memes? Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience 3, 1-7