People & Ideas

Richard Dawkins

Evolution, replicators and the demolition of unnecessary supernatural explanations. Useful for evolutionary reasoning, scientific communication and the original popularisation of the meme as a unit of cultural transmission.

Typographic editorial portrait card for Richard Dawkins

Why he belongs here

Dawkins belongs in the intellectual ancestry of a site about information competing for human attention because he popularised the concept of the meme long before the word meant a picture with Impact font.

His writing also demonstrates the power and risk of strong explanatory metaphors. A useful metaphor can illuminate a system. It can also become a substitute for measuring the system.

Use it, then check it.

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