Meme-Episteme connection: the "gene" analogy 

The relationship with "meme" — isn't it a bit like a "gene" in genetics? A "gene" in some behavioural palette — and "episteme" is a rabbit hole where philosophy, cultural theory, and even a bit of evolutionary biology intersect. I asked my local, offline RAG to help me do some research, based on papers, posts and articles I collected in the years, and continued online with LUMO when necessary. Here's what I discovered.

Richard Dawkins actually coined the term meme in The Selfish Gene (1976), explicitly as a cultural parallel to the gene in biological evolution. 

If a gene is a unit of biological information that gets transmitted across generations via reproduction, a meme would be…