[Dumb_Ox]

If you ever heard of the idea of the "meme" (a self replicating bit of information much like a "gene" but normally called an idea) this is where that idea was born. It leads to a whole new way of viewing culture and human thought.

Dawkins just slapped a scientific-sounding name on a phenomenon well-familiar to linguistics, historians of ideas, and others in humanistic or sociological fields. Another (IHT?) article on Dawkins admits in detail the failures of the mimetics field. Wish I'd kept the link, I think I found it through aldaily.org.

[DarkSavant]

If you ever heard of the idea of the "meme" (a self replicating bit of information much like a "gene" but normally called an idea) this is where that idea was born. It leads to a whole new way of viewing culture and human thought.

Isn't the idea of the meme a meme in and of itself? If so, how it it any more reliable than any other meme? The entire hypothesis strikes me as worthless for any practical purposes.