I'm sorry I didn't understand what "closer to the rock face" means.

As far as I know, Dawkins' books give his version of evolution, that is somewhat non-standard and not yet proven. Gould used to write about evolution more as it was widely accepted by scientists on his time. I know they both have disagreements, but as far as I know Dawkins is faster in writing about not very accepted subjects as widely accepted science.

Hm, perhaps I am misusing that metaphor. Let me try a different metaphor: As you move from well-established, abstract, general principles to newly-proposed ideas that are still being tested against a bunch of specific data, you'll find scientists disagreeing with each other more and more. At the very edge of science, where new hypotheses get started, the put-downs can get pretty sharp. Just because Scientist A calls Scientist B a statistically-ignorant fool doesn't necessarily mean, in any objective sense, that Scientist B is a statistically-ignorant fool. They may just be embroiled in one of those academic debates.

As for your generalizations: I think they're way too sweeping. Gould and Dawkins have written hundreds of thousands of words. Some of those words are probably too daring, others not daring enough; some are words about cutting-edge subjects, some are about classic works in their fields. Some of their words have caught fire in the popular imagination to a much greater extend than their authors intended, i.e. Dawkins' "meme" concept was originally intended as a half-joking metaphor, and he himself doesn't take it too seriously.

Indeed, “meme” is a stupid name for what was completely understandable when simply called an “idea”. The analogy of ideas to genetics is not particularly insightful, and at this point quite worn through.

People congratulate themselves when they have an idea. A group doesn't get an idea. You get a meme from someone else, and it seems to survive on its own. Not all ideas are memes, and not all memes are ideas.

But finding a meme these days is like mentioning the long tail. It seems a little antiquated and cutesy.

Not all memes are ideas? How is that so?

Getting a song stuck in your head (commonly called "earworm", but I think that's a terrible name for it. I think "memelody" makes more sense) when you hear the tune or someone says something that reminds you of it I think qualifies as a meme but not an idea, especially if there is some shared culture reference that makes multiple people think of the same tune from similar stimuli.

I see, thanks a lot for your reply.

I think certain kinds of celebrity gossip may qualify as memes also. I'm confident that gossip is definitely not "ideas".

Thank you again, I should check strong definition of "idea" in use but anyway I see the point there.

Thank you for your interesting replies.