Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA11067 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sun, 5 Mar 2000 01:50:59 GMT To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2000 17:48:29 -0800 From: "Scott Chase" <hemidactylus@my-Deja.com> Message-ID: <HEIMNCFGPGGPCCAA@my-deja.com> X-Sent-Mail: off X-Mailer: MailCity Service Subject: Re: J.Z. Young on mnemons X-Sender-Ip: 209.240.200.128 Organization: My Deja Email (http://www.my-deja.com:80) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en Content-Length: 5364 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
--On Sat, 04 Mar 2000 16:02:32 Aaron Lynch wrote: >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. > > Thanks. I'll definitely look forward to reading this. Young discusses the mnemon in one of his books, but I don't have a ref handy. My own preference for mnemons comes from the fact that if you use the word engram around people who don't know any better, they'll think you belong to a sci-fi cult. But, I have seen engram used fairly recently.
I need to get back into the LTP and synaptic plasticity literature. They've been doing some cool stuff with knockout mice.
Scott
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