The Fascination of Imitation: What Social Neuroscience Reveals about Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Since the 1990s, social neuroscience has established imitation as an unconscious, constitutive element of human identity; to the point that one may reasonably say that human identity is imitative identity. This research has profound implications for the human fascination with imitation in general, as well as with specific kinds of imitation. For the imitative identity, imitation human beings are uniquely, but strangely fascinating. This may readily be seen from the long history of stories about humanly made imitation humans. Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a major entry in the history of such stories. This article shows how social-neuroscientific findings about imitative identity can help us understand Dick's novel.