Episode 63

The fifth of several episodes in which I'm talking about (among other things) symbiosis and mutualism in the natural world with Jim Penny of the Oxford Botanic Garden.

This time we're grappling with the worldview propagated by Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene, leading on to a consideration of whether modern science really is as objective as it tends to claim (its inseparability from cultural and economic forces, etc.) and then to Dawkins' original (pre-Internet) concept of "memes" or units of cultural information.

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Some relevant links:

• David Attenborough
• Richard Dawkins
• The Selfish Gene
• altruism
• the scientific method
• scientism
• Rupert Sheldrake's critique of The Selfish Gene
• Internet meme
• memetics
• Adbusters magazine
• Adbusters' 2012 Meme Wars publication