Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society: The New Science Of Memes - Hardcover

Lynch, Aaron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465084664 ISBN 13: 9780465084661

Publisher: Basic Books, 1996

Synopsis

Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Bennet, and Richard Dawkins (as well as science buffs and readers of Wired Magazine ) will revel in Aaron Lynch's groundbreaking examination of memetics the new study of how ideas and beliefs spread. What characterizes a meme is its capacity for displacing rival ideas and beliefs in an evolutionary drama that determines and changes the way people think. Exactly how do ideas spread, and what are the factors that make them genuine thought contagions? Why, for instance, do some beliefs spread throughout society, while others dwindle to extinction? What drives those intensely held beliefs that spawn ideological and political debates such as views on abortion and opinions about sex and sexuality?By drawing on examples from everyday life, Lynch develops a conceptual basis for understanding memetics. Memes evolve by natural selection in a process similar to that of Genes in evolutionary biology. What makes an idea a potent meme is how effectively it out-propagates other ideas. In memetic evolution, the fittest ideas” are not always the truest or the most helpful, but the ones best at self replication.Thus, crash diets spread not because of lasting benefit, but by alternating episodes of dramatic weight loss and slow regain. Each sudden thinning provokes onlookers to ask, How did you do it?” thereby manipulating them to experiment with the diet and in turn, spread it again. The faster the pounds return, the more often these people enter that disseminating phase, all of which favors outbreaks of the most pathogenic diets. Like a software virus traveling on the Internet or a flu strain passing through a city, thought contagions proliferate by programming for their own propagation. Lynch argues that certain beliefs spread like viruses and evolve like microbes, as mutant strains vie for more adherents and more hosts. In its most revolutionary aspect, memetics asks not how people accumulate ideas, but how ideas accumulate people. Readers of this intriguing theory will be amazed to discover that many popular beliefs about family, sex, politics, religion, health, and war have succeeded by their fitness” as thought contagions.

About this title

Review:

Why do certain ideas become popular? The naive view is that it's because they're true, or at least justified. This fascinating book, influenced by evolutionary biology and epidemiology, is the first full-scale examination of some of the other reasons. Consider Aaron Lynch's example of optimism--it may not be true or warranted, but it tends to prevail because optimists tend to have more children to pass along their outlook to. Sometimes, Lynch points out, there is a paradoxical but predictable expansion-contraction pattern to the social spread of ideas. If nothing else, lobbyists need to look into this stuff to see which side their bread is really buttered on. Warning: this book is densely written. But it's worth the wade.

From the Back Cover:

"One of the most important new ideas of our times is that of 'memes'- the vision of ideas as autonomous entities, leaping from brain to brain in much the same way as viruses leap from body to body, spreading and replicating and 'infecting' the population of 'hosts.' This catchy metaphor has become increasingly powerful and deep, and Aaron Lynch's book is in the vanguard of efforts to clarify it and make it vivid for lay audiences. The very meme of 'memes' is thus taking hold and spreading through the human ideosphere, and it is my hope that Thought Contagion will be a primary vector in this global epidemic. Luckily for us potential hosts, it is both benign and fascinating."- DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER, author of Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies, Metamagical Themas, and Godel, Escher, Bach

"When I get down to writing 'The Selfish Meme,' Aaron Lynch's admirable Thought Contagion will undoubtedly be a prime source-book for intriguing examples and penetrating analyses." -RICHARD DAWKINS, author of River out of Eden and The Selfish Gene

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0465084664
• ISBN 13: 9780465084661
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208