A letter on: The fork and the paperclip: a memetic perspective

Abstract

First paragraph: Recently, there has been much debate on what should and what should not be considered part of the science of memetics. Aunger (2002) notes the familiar fault line between "those who advocate the contagion-like or viral metaphor and those who prefer the gene metaphor" with both groups appearing to claim that the other is retarding progress in memetics. Perhaps, however, it is not so much the metaphor that is retarding the progress in memetics, but the debate itself. If memetics were to focus on real-world examples of supposed memetic phenomena, then we might move beyond metaphor debates, and begin providing people with insight and understanding about the world around us.