MixedThe Guardian...it is important to be upfront about the fact that Dennett and I have not always seen eye-to-eye. Indeed, a German magazine once digitally edited together pictures of us sparring as bare-knuckle boxers. Despite this, and although he may well not thank me for it, there is much here that I agree with ... Bacteria to Bach and Back is an infuriating book. It is too long, repetitive, indulgently digressive and self-referential (no fewer than 64 references to his own publications). But underlying it all there is a subtle and interesting argument ... Memes are, for Dennett, units of cultural transmission. They inhabit a person’s mind and replicate like viruses by infecting other minds. Natural selection filters out weak memes, and speeds the dissemination of strong ones, thus vastly speeding cultural change...Such vacuity makes the meme concept theoretically useless as a tool for understanding cultural evolution. Nor does Dennett actually require memes for his indisputable claim that cultural evolution depends on humans’ sociality and cooperativity.
Luke Dittrich
PanThe GuardianSurgical procedures are described in almost excessive detail. The book is replete with invented dialogue...It’s even more frustrating that the book is reference-free, so there is no way of checking what is invented, or the sources for what is not. But such digressions are only minor irritations compared with the many disconnected detours the book takes.
