Friday 8 February 2013

Dawkins vs Gould on cultural evolution

Someone tried citing Steven J. Gould to me in the context of cultural evolution recently. Er...

To recap, Dawkins helped to pioneer to the modern theory of cultural evolution way back in the 1970s, in an early, popular and influential contribution that pretty-much nailed the topic.

Gould was a know-nothing on the topic of cultural evolution, and produced little but a stream of ignorant blather on the topic.

Dawkins coined the term meme, Gould described it as a "meaningless metaphor".

Apologies to readers expecting a battle, but this one is no contest - it seems to me.

No comments:

Post a Comment