Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA13282 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Mar 2000 19:28:56 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20000314132630.00ee2298@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:26:30 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: Martin Gardner's commentary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 10:29 PM 3/11/00 +0100, Kenneth Van Oost wrote:
>
> It seems to me that the critics in reviewing Blackmore's
>book,and
>not only there,are finding it very difficult to understand what in the
>concept of
>memetics whatever is evolving.No wonder!! I often,with all do respect to all
>members of this list,experience the same thing.
>We take our ideas for granted where we must be critical for ourselves.
>The discussion on ' meaning in memetics' (see Dees/Faichney) comes close
>to what must be the main point in the discussion and that is indeed ' what
>evolves!?'
Good observation that the word's meaning has evolved since Dawkins (1976).
Unfortunately, the direction of that evolution has apparently been toward
ever greater generality and hence vagueness. Dawkins did not give the word
a clear, formal, and specific definition. Therefore, people read into it
whatever they wanted to read. The word also has served as a buzzword to
make existing concepts from such areas as individual psychology, social
psychology, sociology, social influence, marketing science, political
science, common sense, etc. sound new again. More and more "me too"
meanings were added over the years until in 1997, the OED finally came up
with a meaning so broad as to be of little value in non-redundantly
identifying anything more specific than "an element of a culture." This is
not to say that OED is at fault: their lexicographers were merely
discovering and documenting the profusion of meanings that had already
arisen.
I have warned of this before:
At 10:57 PM 6/12/97 -0500, Aaron Lynch wrote:
<snip>
It would certainly have helped if Dawkins had published subsequent papers
that clarified the meaning of the term "meme." But he was quite active in
biology, and giving more attention to memetics might have required a career
change for him. Unfortunately, we are now left with a profusion of
meanings. And if the word means whatever anyone wants it to mean, then it
means everything and nothing at all. It's the same problem you face by
letting the word "parameter" mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. It may
sound fancy and trendy, but ultimately vacuous.
<snip>
But I was only writing for this memetics@mmu.ac.uk list, and apparently too
late at that. The same year, the OED recognized what I consider to be a
uselessly over-inclusive, vague definition. Martin Gardner apparently agrees:
"... But, as I will argue here, a meme is so
broadly defined by its proponents as to be a useless concept,
creating more confusion than light, and I predict that the concept
will soon be forgotten as a curious linguistic quirk of little value."
"...This brings us to the most serious objection that critics
have hurled at memeticists: The notion of a meme is too fuzzy, too
ill-defined."
"... The point is that the notion of a meme is much too broad to be
useful in explaining human thinking and behavior. A meme is little
more than a peculiar terminology for saying the obvious. Who can
deny that cultures change in ways independent of genetics, ways
involving information that is spread throughout society mainly by
spoken and written words?"
[The three related passages here were quoted from "Kilroy Was Here" by
Martin Gardner, Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2000]
Part of evolution is the elimination from scientific discourse of useless
concepts that create more confusion than light, to borrow from Gardner. To
say that the word is "evolving" thus does not indicate that it has a future
of ever wider usage in science. Rather, it has become clear that the word
"meme," with its profusion of meanings leading to lack of meaning, has been
an impediment to communicating useful scientific ideas, measured
propagation parameters, etc. to a variety of leading scientists and their
audiences.
As Mark points out, Martin Gardner's commentary does not address the
technical definition of "meme" that I have been using in my more technical
works since 1991. Since Gardner was doing a review of Blackmore's 1999
book, _The Meme Machine_, he was probably misinformed by the statement on
p. 45 that "Some authors, however, imply that virtually everything we know
is a meme (e.g. Brodie 1996; Gabora 1997; Lynch 1996)." In reality, the
non-technical parlance of my book treats memes as "actively contagious
ideas"--a mere subset of ideas generally and definitely not "everything we
know." (Susan Blackmore has agreed to correct this in any future
printings.) More formal definitions have been published in my 1991 and 1998
technical papers at _Journal of Ideas_ and _Journal of Memetics_, as well
as on my web pages. For instance, my 1991 paper defines memes as
"homoderivative mnemons." Unfortunately, p. 64 of _The Meme Machine_ states
that "Lynch (1991) defines them [memes] as memory abstractions...", again
conveying a misconception about my definition and usage. So with all the
misconceptions about my definition spreading around, I quote the
neologism-free but still concise definition 2 of "meme" from
www.thoughtcontagion.com:
"A memory item, or portion of an organism's neurally-stored information,
whose occurrence depended critically on causation by prior occurrence of
the same memory item in one or more other organisms' nervous systems.
By this definition, memes are a somewhat broader category than culturally
transmitted beliefs, but more specific than thoughts, ideas, or memory
content in general. The word as defined here intended to be usefully
specific while still identifying a very broad class of phenomena.
--Aaron Lynch
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