Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. The term meme (IPA: , to rhyme with theme, not or ), coined in 1976 by the zoologist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another. ...

History of the term

The term comes from a transliteration of a Greek word and was used in 1904 by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon in his work Die Mnemische Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalenempfindungen, translated into English in 1921 as The Mneme. Richard Wolfgang Semon (August 22, 1859 -- December 12, 1918) was a German biologist. ...

In his book The Selfish Gene (1976), the ethologist Richard Dawkins coined the slightly different term "meme" to describe a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, arguing that replication also happens in culture, albeit in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that the meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the mutating replicator in human cultural evolution. It is a pattern that can influence its surroundings – that is, it has causal agency – and can propagate. This created great debate among sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines, because Dawkins himself did not provide a sufficient explanation of how the replication of units of information in the brain controls human behaviour and ultimately culture, since the principal topic of the book was genetics. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of memetics in The Selfish Gene, but rather coined the term meme in a speculative spirit. Accordingly, the term "unit of information" came to be defined in different ways by many scientists. Original book cover from the painting The Expectant Valley by zoologist Desmond Morris The Selfish Gene is a very popular and somewhat controversial book on evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. ... Ethology is the scientific study of animal behavior considered as a branch of zoology. ... Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... The term meme (IPA: , to rhyme with theme, not or ), coined in 1976 by the zoologist and evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, refers to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another. ... Cultural evolution is the structural change of a society and its values over time. ... For other meanings of this term, see gene (disambiguation). ... Culture (from the [[Latin)) cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ... Original book cover from the painting The Expectant Valley by zoologist Desmond Morris The Selfish Gene is a very popular and somewhat controversial book on evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. ...

The modern memetics movement dates from the mid 1980s (a January 1983 Metamagical Themas column by Douglas Hofstadter in Scientific American was influential). The study differs from mainstream cultural evolutionary theory in that its practitioners frequently come from outside the fields of anthropology and sociology, and are often not academics. The massive popular impact of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene has undoubtedly been an important factor in drawing in people of disparate intellectual backgrounds. Another crucial stimulus was the publication in 1992 of Consciousness Explained by Tufts University philosopher Daniel Dennett, which incorporated the meme concept into an influential theory of the mind. In his 1993 essay Viruses of the Mind, Richard Dawkins used memetics to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions. Metamagical Themas is an eclectic collection of articles written for Scientific American during the early 1980s by Douglas Hofstadter, and published together as a book in 1985 by Basic Books (ISBN 0465045669) . The subject matter of the articles is loosely woven about themes in philosophy, creativity, artificial intelligence and important... Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American academic. ... Original book cover from the painting The Expectant Valley by zoologist Desmond Morris The Selfish Gene is a very popular and somewhat controversial book on evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. ... Cover of Consciousness Explained Consciousness Explained (published 1991) is a controversial book by the American philosopher Daniel Dennett which attempts to explain how consciousness arises from interaction of physical and cognitive processes in the brain. ... Daniel Clement Dennett (b. ... Viruses of the Mind (1993) is a controversial essay by Richard Dawkins using memetics, epidemiology, and an analogy with biological and computer viruses to analyse the propagation of religious beliefs. ...

However, the foundation of memetics in full modern incarnation originates in the publication in 1996, of two books by authors outside the academic mainstream: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by former Microsoft executive turned motivational speaker and professional poker player, Richard Brodie, and Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch, a mathematician and philosopher who worked for many years as an engineer at Fermilab. Lynch conceived his theory totally independently of any contact with academics in the cultural evolutionary sphere, and apparently was not even aware of Dawkins' The Selfish Gene until his book was very close to publication. Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ... Richard Brodie is the original author of Microsoft Word. ... Aaron Lynch (born 1957). ... Fermilabs Tevatron Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia near Chicago, Illinois, (Google Sat Map) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics, operated for the Department of Energy by the Universities Research Association (URA). ... Original book cover from the painting The Expectant Valley by zoologist Desmond Morris The Selfish Gene is a very popular and somewhat controversial book on evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. ...

Around the same time as the publication of the books by Lynch and Brodie, a new e-journal appeared on the web, hosted by the Centre for Policy Modelling at Manchester Metropolitan University (Now closed, but still available for viewing) Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. (There had been a short-lived paper memetics publication starting in 1990, the Journal of Ideas edited by Elan Moritz. [1]) The e-journal soon became the central point for publication and debate within the nascent memetics community. In 1999, Susan Blackmore, a psychologist at the University of the West of England, published The Meme Machine, which more fully worked out the ideas of Dennett, Lynch and Brodie and attempted to compare and contrast them with various approaches from the cultural evolutionary mainstream, as well as providing novel, and controversial, memetic-based theories for the evolution of language and the human sense of individual selfhood. Susan Jane Blackmore (born July 29, 1951) is a British freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine. ... The Meme Machine (1999) is a popular science book by psychologist Susan Blackmore on the subject of memes. ...

Internalists and externalists

The memetics movement split almost immediately into those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of information in the brain," and those who wanted to redefine it as observable cultural artefacts and behaviours. These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists." Prominent internalists included both Lynch and Brodie; the most vocal externalists included Derek Gatherer, a geneticist from Liverpool John Moores University and William Benzon, a writer on cultural evolution and music. The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a quantitative science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the directly quantifiable aspects of culture. Internalists countered with various arguments: that brain states will eventually be directly observable with advanced technology, that most cultural anthropologists agree that culture is about beliefs and not artefacts, or that artefacts cannot be replicators in the same sense as mental entities (or DNA) are replicators. The debate became so heated that a 1998 Symposium on Memetics, organised as part of the 15th International Conference on Cybernetics, passed a motion calling for an end to definitional debates.

The most advanced statement of the internalist school came in 2002 with the publication of The Electric Meme, by Robert Aunger, an anthropologist from the University of Cambridge. Aunger also organised a conference in Cambridge in 1999, at which prominent sociologists and anthropologists were able to give their assessment of the progress made in memetics to that date. This resulted in the publication of Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science, edited by Aunger and with a foreword by Dennett, in 2000.

Maturity

In 2005, the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission ceased publication and published a set of "obituaries" for memetics. This was not intended to suggest that there can be no further work on memetics, but that the exciting childhood of memetics, which began in 1996, is finally drawing to a close, and that memetics will have to survive or become extinct in terms of the results it can generate for the field of cultural evolution. Memetics as a social, Internet-fuelled popular scientific movement is now probably over. Many of the original proponents have moved away from it. Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have both expressed some reservations as to its applicability^{[citation needed]}, Susan Blackmore has left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer moved to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still occasionally publishes on memetics-related matters. Richard Brodie is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. Aaron Lynch disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book), and is reported to have died in late 2005. Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... Daniel Clement Dennett (b. ... Susan Jane Blackmore (born July 29, 1951) is a British freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine. ... Richard Brodie is the original author of Microsoft Word. ... Aaron Lynch (born 1957). ...

Susan Blackmore (2002) re-stated the meme definition as whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive, memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes. In her definition, thus, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires brain capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the mutation rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every interaction of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture. Susan Jane Blackmore (born July 29, 1951) is a British freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine. ... Imitation is an advanced animal behaviour whereby an individual observes anothers behaviour and replicates it itself. ... In Biology, co-adaptation, or coadaptation refers to the mutual adaptation of: Species: see mutualism, symbiosis organs: see the evolution of the eye. ... For more specific information about the human brain, see its main article at human brain A sketch of the human brain by artist Priyan Weerappuli, imposed upon his sketch of the profile of Michaelangelos David In animals, the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control... It has been suggested that mutant be merged into this article or section. ... Memetics is the scientific approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. ...

New developments

Dawkins responds in A Devil's Chaplain that there are actually two different types of memetic processes. The first is a type of cultural idea, action, or expression, which does have high variance; for instance, a student of his who had inherited some of the mannerisms of Wittgenstein. However, he also describes a self-correcting meme, highly resistant to mutation. As an example of this, he gives origami patterns in elementary schools – except in rare cases, the meme is either passed on in the exact sequence of instructions, or (in the case of a forgetful child) terminates. This type of meme tends not to evolve, and to experience profound mutations in the rare event that it does. Some memeticists, however, see this as more of a continuum of meme strength, rather than two types of memes. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ... The traditional crane and papers of the same size used to fold it A paper Pegasus designed by F. Kawahata Origami (Japanese: 折り紙 oru, to fold, and kami, paper folding paper) is the art of paper folding. ...

Another definition, given by Hokky Situngkir, tried to offer a more rigorous formalism for the meme, memeplexes, and the deme, seeing the meme as a cultural unit in a cultural complex system. It is based on the Darwinian genetic algorithm with some modifications to account for the different patterns of evolution seen in genes and memes. In the method of memetics as the way to see culture as a complex adaptive system, he describes a way to see memetics as an alternative methodology of cultural evolution. However, there are as many possible definitions that are credited to the word "meme". For example, in the sense of computer simulation the term memetic programming is used to define a particular computational viewpoint. In biology, a deme (rhymes with team) is another word for a local population of organisms of one species that actively interbreed with one another and share a distinct gene pool. ... There are many definitions of complexity, therefore many natural, artificial and abstract objects or networks can be considered to be complex systems, and their study (complexity science) is highly interdisciplinary. ... A genetic algorithm (or short GA) is a search technique used in computing to find true or approximate solutions to optimization and search problems. ... This article is about evolution in biology. ... A computer simulation or a computer model is a computer program that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. ...

Memetics can be simply understood as a method for scientific analysis of cultural evolution. However, proponents of memetics as described in the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission believe that 'memetics' has the potential to be an important and promising analysis of culture using the framework of evolutionary concepts. Keith Henson who wrote Memetics and the Modular-Mind (Analog Aug. 1987) [2] makes the case that memetics needs to incorporate Evolutionary psychology to understand the psychological traits of a meme's host. [3] This is especially true of time-varying, meme-amplification host-traits, such as those leading to wars. See Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War.[4] [5] Howard Keith Henson (b. ... Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated ev-psych or EP) is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain certain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as evolved adaptations, i. ...

The application of memetics to a difficult complex social system problem, environmental sustainability, has recently been attempted at thwink.org. Using meme types and memetic infection in several stock and flow simulation models, Jack Harich has demonstrated several interesting phenomena that are best, and perhaps only, explained by memes. One model, The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace, argues that the fundamental reason corruption is the norm in politics is due to an inherent structural advantage of one feedback loop pitted against another. Another model, The Memetic Evolution of Solutions to Difficult Problems, uses memes, the evolutionary algorithm, and the scientific method to show how complex solutions evolve over time and how that process can be improved. The insights gained from these models are being used to engineer memetic solution elements to the sustainability problem. Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. ... In artificial intelligence, an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is a subset of evolutionary computation, a generic population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. ... Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. ...

In Selfish Sounds and Linguistic Evolution (2004, Cambridge University Press), Austrian linguist Nikolaus Ritt has attempted to operationalise memetic concepts and use them for the explanation of long term sound changes and change conspiracies in early English. It is argued that a generalised Darwinian framework for handling cultural change can provide explanations where established, speaker centred approaches fail to do so. The book makes comparatively concrete suggestions about the possible material structure of memes, and provides two empirically rich case studies.

In A Memetic Paradigm of Project Management (International Journal of Project Management, 23 (8) 575-583) Australian academic S.J. Whitty has argued that project management is a memeplex with the language and stories of its practitioners at its core. This radical, some say heretical approach requires project managers to consider that most of what they call a project and what it is to manage one is an illusion; a human construct about a collection of feelings, expectations, and sensations, cleverly conjured up, fashioned, and conveniently labelled by the human brain. It also requires project managers to consider that the reasons for using project management are not consciously driven to maximize profit. Project managers are required to consider project management as naturally occurring, self-serving, evolving and designing organizations for its own purpose.

Open questions

• How can the meme be measured as a cultural unit in cultural evolution?
  • Measurement implies some sort of notational description able to usefully label a meme's content.
  • Measurement implies a notation of meme propagation, both historically (a memeology, so to speak) and in the present.
  • Measurement implies a way to provide tools for describing likely futures for a meme.
• How different are biological and cultural evolution?
• Does memetic evolution follow the Lamarckian evolution model, where characteristics are acquired during a specimen's lifetime and passed to its descendents?
• What is the interplay between the memetic approach and the recent advancements of computer science, including computational sociology?
• As memetics is concerned with cultural evolution, and much of culture is transmitted through language, why are the fields of historical and evolutionary linguistics ignored in discussions of memetics?
• Will memetics live up to the definition of science (i.e. be able to be proven valid) through induction, falsifiability, coherentism and respect for Occam's Razor?

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (August 1, 1744 - December 28, 1829) was a major 19th century naturalist, who was one of the first to use the term biology in its modern sense. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Aristotle appears first to establish the mental behaviour of induction as a category of reasoning. ... In science and the philosophy of science, falsifiability, contingency, and defeasibility are roughly equivalent terms referring to the property of empirical statements that they must admit of logical counterexamples. ... Coherentism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... William of Ockham Occams razor (also spelled Ockhams razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. ...

Terminology

• Memotype – is the actual information-content of a meme.

• Meme-complex – (sometimes abbreviated memeplex) is a collection or grouping of memes that have evolved into a mutually supportive or symbiotic relationship. Simply put, a meme-complex is a set of ideas that reinforce each other. Meme-complexes are roughly analogous to the symbiotic collection of individual genes that make up the genetic codes of biological organisms. An example of a memeplex would be a religion.

• Memeoid – is a neologism for people who have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential. Examples include kamikazes, suicide bombers and cult members who commit mass suicide. The term was apparently coined by H. Keith Henson in "Memes, L5 and the Religion of the Space Colonies," L5 News, 1985 pp. 5-8, [6] and referenced in the expanded second edition of Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene (p. 330).

The Memetic Lexicon (also Lexicon) is a glossary of words used in memetics. ... Common Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) in their Magnificent sea anemone (Heteractis magnifica) home. ... For other meanings of this term, see gene (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that Personnel involved in the development of World War II suicide attacks be merged into this article or section. ... A suicide bombing is a bomb attack on people or property, committed by a person who knows the explosion will cause his or her own death in addition to the attacks primary purpose (see suicide, suicide weapons). ... This article is becoming very long. ... Howard Keith Henson (b. ... Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... Original book cover from the painting The Expectant Valley by zoologist Desmond Morris The Selfish Gene is a very popular and somewhat controversial book on evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. ...

See also

Computational sociology is a recently developed branch of sociology that uses computation to analyze social phenomena. ... The term copycat (also written as copy-cat or copy cat) refers to the tendency of humans to duplicate the behavior of others, as expressed in the saying, monkey see, monkey do. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Dual inheritance theory, (or DIT), in sharp contrast to the notion that culture overrides biology, posits that humans are products of the interaction between biological evolution and cultural evolution. ... This article is about evolution in biology. ... Evolutionary epistemology is a theory, in metaphysics, applying the concepts of biological evolution to the growth of human knowledge and, in particular, scientific theories. ... General Semantics is a school of thought founded by Alfred Korzybski in about 1933 in response to his observations that most people had difficulty defining human and social discussions and problems and could almost never predictably resolve them into elements that were responsive to successful intervention or correction. ... This article needs to be wikified. ... Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (August 1, 1744 - December 28, 1829) was a major 19th century naturalist, who was one of the first to use the term biology in its modern sense. ... . ... A meme pool is the sum total of all memes present in a given population. ... In a generic sense, a replicator can be anything capable of self-replication. ... Social constructionism or social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge based on Hegels ideas, and developed by Durkheim at the turn of the century. ... Self-replication is the process by which some things make copies of themselves. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

References

• Boyd, Rob & Richerson, Peter J. (1985). Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago University Press.
• Boyd, Rob & Richerson, Peter J. (2005). Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago University Press. ISBN 0-226-71284-2
• Cloak, F.T. 1975. Is a cultural ethology possible? Human Ecology 3: 161—182.
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press, 1976, 2nd edition, December 1989, hardcover, 352 pages, ISBN 0-19-217773-7; April 1992, ISBN 0-19-857519-X; trade paperback, September 1990, 352 pages, ISBN 0-19-286092-5
• The Electric Meme by Robert Aunger.
• The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press, 1999, hardcover ISBN 0-19-850365-2, trade paperback ISBN 0-9658817-8-4, May 2000, ISBN 0-19-286212-X
• The Ideology of Cybernetic Totalist Intellectuals an essay by Jaron Lanier which is very strongly critical of "meme totalists" who assert memes over bodies.
• Culture as Complex Adaptive System by Hokky Situngkir – formal interplays between memetics and cultural analysis.
• Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
• Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie – An introduction to the field of memetics.
• Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology by Jack Balkin which uses memetics to explain the growth and spread of ideology.

The Selfish Gene is a controversial book by Richard Dawkins published in 1976. ... Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. ... Susan Jane Blackmore (born July 29, 1951) is a British freelance writer, lecturer, and broadcaster, perhaps best known for her book The Meme Machine. ... Richard Brodie is the original author of Microsoft Word. ... Jack M. Balkin (born August 13, 1956 in Kansas City, Missouri) is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School. ...

External links

• The Memetic Lexicon
• Memetics publications on the web
• Viral Meme
• Journal of Memetics
• Alt.memetics
• Memetics (Principia Cybernetica Web)
• Memetics discussion list archives
• The Meme Machine, Interview of Susan Blackmore
• Memetics: A Critique Interesting semiotics point of view
• The Selfish Meme

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