The Meme Machine

"We once thought that biological design needed a creator, but we now know that natural selection can do all the designing on its own. Similarly, we once thought that human design required a conscious designer inside us, but we now know that memetic selection can do it on its own. We once thought that design required foresight and a plan, but we now know that natural selection can build creatures that look as though they were built to plan when in fact there was none. If we take memetics seriously there is no room for anyone or anything to jump into the evolutionary process and stop it, direct it, or do anything to it. There is just the evolutionary process of genes and memes playing itself endlessly out - and no one watching."
(Blackmore 1999, The Meme Machine, p. 242)

“Die Sprache spricht, nicht der Mensch. Der Mensch spricht nur, indem er geschicklich der Sprache entspricht.”
(Heidegger 1956, Der Satz vom Grund, p. 161)