Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id WAA10726 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 4 Mar 2000 22:04:42 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20000304160232.010948cc@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2000 16:02:32 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: J.Z. Young on mnemons In-Reply-To: <BMJFFPIDIKAOCCAA@my-deja.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 11:09 AM 3/4/00 -0800, Scott Chase wrote:
>
>--
>
>On Sat, 04 Mar 2000 12:03:58 Aaron Lynch wrote:
>>At 08:40 AM 3/4/00 -0800, Scott Chase wrote:
>>>This is an apt quote from J.Z. Young:
>>>
>>>(bq) "Incidentally many modern ideas on the subject go back to Richard
>>Semon (1904) who wrote much of the mneme or mnemic faculty and invented the
>>word engram. I do not think however that anyone has used mnemon or a
>>similar word in quite the same sense of the module now to be proposed" (eq)
>>>
>>>ref:
>>>
>>>Young JZ. 1965. The organization of a memory system. Proceedings of the
>>Royal Society of London (163): 285*-320
>>>
>>>I may have goofed the initial page number on my previous post.
>>>
>>>Scott
>>>
>>
>>
>>Thank you, Scott.
>>
>>I have actually seen this article, although not until after inventing a new
>>definition for "mnemon" and publishing it in 1991. I do not, however, the
>>term in the same sense as the module Young (1965) proposes. Young's meaning
>>also differs from my own in that he does not define "mnemon" as something
>>that can be "the same" from one organism to another. Young's "mnemon" is
>>thus not, in my view, a memetics-related term: without "sameness" from
>>individual to individual, there can be no "replication," and Young does not
>>discuss "replication." Also, Young's usage seems does not seem to be in
>>current usage by memory researchers as far as I can tell. I would, however,
>>be interested in hearing from anyone who finds a memory research paper or
>>other science paper from the past 25 years that uses the word. I intend to
>>make a more comprehensive footnote about the word in future works. Notice
>>that Young also expresses some uncertainty about whether anyone else has
>>used "mnemon" before he did. That is not surprising, since the word itself
>>is easily coined. Nevertheless, I would also appreciate hearing from anyone
>>who knows of a usage pre-dating Young's.
>>
>>I also have found one dictionary that lists "Mnemon" with a Greek mythology
>>definition, although this may be a typographical mutation of "Memnon."
>>
>>
>I haven't delved into the entirety of Young's corpus, so I'm unsure of
whether Young is the originator of the term mnemon. He did use the term
though. I've focused more on Semon and even in his case only on one of his
books. Mnemon (ala your usage and Young's usage) might be preferable to
engram (ala Semon's and Lashley's usage) for a memory unit, because the
latter has such a negative connotation. Interestingly Leo Buss introduces
the term engram though in his book _The Evolution of Individuality_.
>
>Some of Semon's other ideas, such as the term ecphory for memory retrieval
and engraphy for memory encoding might apply to memetics. As far as
analogies between genes and memes, Semon's work might also be applicable
(or at least of interest). My views are very tentative and not thoroughly
fleshed out yet. Diffidence is the word I'm probably looking for here (my
confidence level is close to baseline). In a historical perspective Semon
is fascinating because of his association with Ernst Haeckel and German
evolutionary biology of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century.
>
>I'm not overly familiar with the Greek mythology, but isn't there
something about Mnemosyne and the Muses?
>
>The cool part about J.Z. Young was that one of his books was a
supplemental text for a vertebrate zoology course I took a few years ago.
>
>Scott
I think I got Young and Cherkin confused above. As I now recall, it was
Cherkin (1966) who proposed the term "mnemon" in an article about engrams.
His meaning was "the minimum physical change in the nervous system that
encodes one memory," though I do not happen to have the paper handy. (It is
in my files somewhere.) If my own memory serves me correctly, it was the
different delays in publication process and private correspondence that
accounted for Cherkin (1966) being the basis of Young (1965) on mnemons,
but I recommend reading the sources to verify before including it in a
paper. I will want to re-read the works myself before writing my elaborated
footnote. I am not sure if the Cherkin/Young usage really allows for
"mmemon" to replace "engram." I suppose that if recent bio-molecular memory
researchers looked for a way to revive the engram concept under a different
name, you might be able to find them already using some replacement term.
Reference:
Cherkin, A. (1966). Toward a Quantitative View of the Engram. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 50: 88-89.
--Aaron Lynch
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