Memes and the Exploitation of Imagination

Abstract

The general issue to be addressed in a Mandel Lecture is how (or whether) art promotes human evolution or development. I shall understand the term "art" in its broadest connotations-perhaps broader than the American Society for Aesthetics would normally recognize: I shall understand art to include all artifice, all human invention. What I shall say will a fortiori include art in the narrower sense, but I don't intend to draw particular attention to the way my thesis applies to it.