Darwinian Creativity and Memetics
Acumen (2011)
| Abstract | The book examines how Darwinism has been used to explain novelty and change in culture through the Darwinian approach to creativity and the theory of memes. The first claims that creativity is based on a Darwinian process of blind variation and selection, while the latter claims that culture is based on and explained by units - memes - that are similar to genes. Both theories try to describe and explain mind and culture by applying Darwinism by way of analogies. Kronfeldner shows that the analogies involved in these theories lead to claims that give either wrong or at least no new descriptions or explanations of the phenomena at issue. Whereas the two approaches are usually defended or criticized on the basis that they are dangerous for our vision of ourselves, this book takes a different perspective: it questions the acuteness of these approaches. Darwinian theory is not like a dangerous wolf, hunting for our self image. Far from it, in the case of the two analogical applications addressed in this book, Darwinian theory is shown to behave more like a disoriented sheep in wolf's clothing. - A revised and much shortened version of a dissertation (2007, Darwinism, Memes and Creativity: A Critique of Analogical Reasoning from Nature to Culture). | |||||||||
| Keywords | Darwinism Culture Creativity Analogies Cultural Evolution Memes | |||||||||
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| ISBN(s) | 1844652564 | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesMaria Kronfeldner (2007). Darwinism, Memes, and Creativity: A Critique of Darwinian Analogical Reasoning From Nature to Culture. Dissertation, University of Regensburg
Chris Buskes (forthcoming). Darwinism Extended: A Survey of How the Idea of Cultural Evolution Evolved. Philosophia:1-31.
Maria Kronfeldner (2010). Darwinian 'Blind' Hypothesis Formation Revisited. Synthese 175:193--218.
Mark Greenberg (2004). Goals Versus Memes: Explanation in the Theory of Cultural Evolution. In Susan L. Hurley & Nick Chater (eds.), Perspectives on Imitation. MIT Press.
Robert Boroch (2011). Against Memetics. Hybris (15):69-99.
Matt Gers (2008). The Case for Memes. Biological Theory 3 (4):305-315.
Robert Boroch (2011). Against Memetics. Hybris (15):62-99.
Maria Kronfeldner (2010). Won't You Please Unite? Darwinism, Cultural Evolution and Kinds of Synthesis. In A. Barahona, H.-J. Rheinberger & E. Suarez-Diaz (eds.), The Hereditary Hourglass: Genetics and Epigenetics, 1868-2000. Max Planck Insititute for the History of Science.
Susan Blackmore (2006). Why We Need Memetics. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4):349-350.
John Richardson (2004/2008). Nietzsche's New Darwinism. Oxford University Press.
Alfonso Montuori & Hillary Stephenson (2010). Creativity, Culture Contact, and Diversity. World Futures 66 (3 & 4):266 – 285.
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