Editing Memetics (section)

===Decline===
In 2005, the ''Journal of Memetics'' ceased publication and published a set of articles on the future of memetics. The website states that although "there was to be a relaunch... after several years nothing has happened".<ref name="JoMFrontpage">{{cite web|title=Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission|url=http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/|work=Journal of Memetics|access-date=17 September 2010|archive-date=10 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810103732/http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Susan Blackmore]] left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science-writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer moved to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still occasionally publishes on memetics-related matters. [[Richard Brodie (programmer)|Richard Brodie]] is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. [[Aaron Lynch (writer)|Aaron Lynch]] disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book), adopting the self-description "thought contagionist". He died in 2005.

[[Susan Blackmore]] (2002) re-stated the definition of meme as: whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators in the sense as defined by Dawkins.<ref>[[Richard Dawkins|Dawkins, R.]] (1982) [http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/dawkins_replicators.html "Replicators and Vehicles"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210226171250/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/dawkins_replicators.html |date=2021-02-26}} King's College Sociobiology Group, eds., ''Current Problems in Sociobiology'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.&nbsp;45–64. "A replicator may be defined as any entity in the universe of which copies are made."</ref>
That is, they are information that is copied. Memes are copied by [[imitation]], teaching and other methods. The copies are not perfect: memes are copied with variation; moreover, they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Only some of the variants can survive. The combination of these three elements (copies; variation; competition for survival) forms precisely the condition for [[Darwinian evolution]], and so memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called [[co-adapted]] meme complexes, or ''[[memeplexes]]''. In Blackmore's definition, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires [[Human brain|brain]] capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the [[mutation]] rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every iteration of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}

Many researchers of cultural evolution regard memetic theory of this time a failed paradigm superseded by [[dual inheritance theory]].<ref>{{cite journal|author=Radim Chvaja|title=Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study.|journal=Perspectives on Science|year=2020|volume=28|issue=4|pages=542–570|doi=10.1162/posc_a_00350|doi-access=free}}</ref> Others instead suggest it is not superseded but rather holds a small but distinct intellectual space in cultural evolutionary theory.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Cao |first=Rosa |date=December 2020 |title=Crowding out Memetic Explanation |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S003182480001655X/type/journal_article |journal=Philosophy of Science |language=en |volume=87 |issue=5 |pages=1160–1171 |doi=10.1086/710518 |issn=0031-8248 |s2cid=225622281}}</ref>