Susan Blackmore

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Susan Blackmore

Susan Blackmore
Born Susan Jane Blackmore
29 July 1951 (1951-07-29) (age 57)
Education St. Hilda's College, Oxford,
University of Surrey
Occupation Freelance writer,
Lecturer,
Broadcaster
Partner Adam Hart-Davis
Website
Official Website

Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is an English freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster on psychology and the paranormal, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine.

Contents

[edit] Career

In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St. Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology. She went on to do a postgraduate degree in environmental psychology at the University of Surrey, achieving an MSc degree in 1974. In 1980, she got her PhD degree in parapsychology from the same university, her thesis being entitled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process." After some period of time spent in research on parapsychology and the paranormal.[1] her attitude towards the field moved from belief to scepticism.[2] She is a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and in 1991 was awarded the CSICOP Distinguished Skeptic Award.[3]

Blackmore has done research on memes (which she wrote about in her popular book The Meme Machine) and evolutionary theory. Her book Consciousness: An Introduction (2004), is a textbook that broadly covers the field of consciousness studies. She was on the editorial board for the Journal of Memetics (an electronic journal) from 1997 to 2001, and has been a consulting editor of the Skeptical Inquirer since 1998.[citation needed]

She has appeared on television a number of times, discussing such paranormal phenomena as ghosts, extra-sensory perception, intelligent design, the multiverse, and out-of-body experiences, in what she describes as the "unenviable role of 'rent-a-sceptic,'" and she has also presented a show on alien abductions. Another programme which she has presented discusses the intelligence of apes.[citation needed]

She acted as one of the psychologists who featured on the British version of the television show "Big Brother," speaking about the psychological state of the contestants. She is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.[4]

[edit] Memetics

Susan Blackmore has made contributions to the field of memetics. Her clearly written works are aimed at a wide readership. The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene and although the term has been widely used it is often misunderstood.[original research?] Blackmore's book The Meme Machine is perhaps the most thorough introduction to memetics.[original research?] In his foreword to this work, Dawkins said 'Any theory deserves to be given its best shot, and this is what Susan Blackmore has done for the theory of the meme.'[cite this quote] Other treatments of memes can be found in the works of Robert Aunger: The Electric Meme, and Jon Whitty: A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management.[5]

Blackmore's treatment of memetics insists that memes are true evolutionary replicators, a second replicator that like genetics is subject to the Darwinian algorithm and undergoes evolutionary change. Her prediction on the central role played by imitation as the cultural replicator and the neural structures that must be unique to humans necessary to support them have recently been confirmed by research on mirror neurons and the differences in extent of these structures between humans and our closest ape relations.[6][citation needed]

In her work on memetics she has emphasized the role that Darwinian mechanisms play in cultural evolution and has helped develop the field of Universal Darwinism[7].[citation needed]. The chapter titled 'Universal Darwinism' in The Meme Machine may have been the first usage of this term to denote the body of scientific knowledge employing Darwinian mechanisms.

At the Feb 2008 TED conference Blackmore introduced a special category of memes called temes. Temes are memes which live in technological artifacts instead of the human mind.[citation needed]

[edit] Personal life

In 1977, she married fellow academic Tom Troscianko, and they had two children: Emily Tamarisk Troscianko (born 1982) and Jolyon Tomasz Troscianko (born 1984). She now lives in Bristol with the television presenter and scientist Adam Hart-Davis.[citation needed]

Blackmore is an active practitioner of Zen, although she identifies herself as "not a Buddhist".[8] Blackmore is an atheist who has criticised religion sharply, having said, for instance, that "all kinds of infectious memes thrive in religions, in spite of being false, such as the idea of a creator god, virgin births, the subservience of women, transubstantiation, and many more. In the major religions, they are backed up by admonitions to have faith not doubt, and by untestable but ferocious rewards and punishments."[9]

[edit] Quotes

  • Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies.[10]
  • If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe.[11]
  • The other key to my failures seemed to be belief. I was told that I didn’t get results because I didn’t believe strongly enough in psi, because I didn’t have an open mind![12]
  • The way I really think is more like this “I am a scientist. I think the way to the truth is by investigation. I suspect that telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and life after death do not exist because I have been looking in vain for them for 25 years. I have been wrong lots of times before and am not afraid of it”.[13]

[edit] Books

[edit] Further reading

  • "The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of Negative Research in Parapsychology", Skeptical Inquirer, 11:244-55. available online
  • "A Critical Examination of the Blackmore Psi Experiments", The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research , 83:123-144. available online

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Blackmore, 1986, p.163
  2. ^ Blackmore, 1987, p.249
  3. ^ A Who's Who of Media Skeptics: Skeptics or Dogmatists?. Accessed 2008-06-03.
  4. ^ Distinguished Supporters - British Humanist Association, accessed 2008-1-12
  5. ^ A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management
  6. ^ Iacoboni, M., "Understanding others: imitation, language, empathy" In: Perspectives on imitation: from cognitive neuroscience to social science, Hurley, S., and Chater, N. (Eds), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, in press
  7. ^ Blackmore Susan (1999), The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press, University of Oxford
  8. ^ Dr. Susan Blackmore
  9. ^ Dr. Susan Blackmore
  10. ^ Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 74
  11. ^ Guardian | Life lessons
  12. ^ The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of
  13. ^ Dr. Susan Blackmore

[edit] External links

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