Let's Talk Memes

Except does it really say anything?

It doesn’t really add anything to an understanding of how ideas spread or change. Just a way to explain away behaviors that seem to not be explainable according by more traditional ethology or evolutionary psychology methods.

The means by which certain ideas spread and why, the manner in which concepts are “turned” to be metaphorically applied onto novel data sets, the process by which approaches are reformed/topologically altered to fit current needs … memetics approaches none of these. And these are the nitty gritty of psychology, sociology, advertising, propaganda, and even epistemolgy.

IIRC, a main objection to the meme idea is that there is nothing corresponding to DNA in ideas. (This is the missing mechanism problem that Little Nemo pointed out.) With heredity, DNA allows traits to get “locked in” and passed to succeeding generations. Ideas, OTOH, are fluid, and can be generated and re-generated again and again. (I wish I had a reference for this.) So my vote is for “good analogy, but not really a useful theory”.