Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA24780 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 18 Mar 2000 19:03:20 GMT Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.20000318130035.011d943c@popmail.mcs.net> X-Sender: aaron@popmail.mcs.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 13:00:35 -0600 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Aaron Lynch <aaron@mcs.net> Subject: Re: objections to "memes" In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.4.10.10003180941080.4681496-100000@helios.physics .utoronto.ca> References: <20000317205517.17364.qmail@nw175.netaddress.usa.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 09:51 AM 3/18/00 -0500, Robert Logan wrote:
>Hi Meme adherents
>
>I wonder why people who believe that memes are a useless concept bother to
>advocate their position. What is it about the idea which is so powerful
>and threatening to them that they must take up arms against it. Curious.
>n'est pas. This thought is directed to those of us who think that memes
>are useful. If you are in the other camp please do not take offense but
>perhaps you could explain why you spend time studying a concept you deem
>useless.
>
>Memes obviously resonate with many scholars from many different fields and
>hence in the sense of a Kuhnian paradigm they are useful. I remind the
>group of a Planck quote from Kuhn's book: " a new scientifc truth does not
>triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but
>ratherbecause its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up
>that is familiar with it."
>
>>From these words I conclude it is not the arguments of our generation that
>will win the day one day or another but rather whether or not the next
>generation of scholars will find memes useful.
>
>With goodwill to all and hoping to avoid flames I am Bob Logan
There really are at least two questions here. What we have is not one
paradigm, but a variety of paradigms that can mostly be called evolutionary
culture propagation paradigms. Superimposed on this variety is a variety of
meanings to the word "meme." Some define "memes" so as to never be in the
brain, some say they always are in the brain, some give fairly specific
definitions, others give extremely broad definitions.
Setting aside the terminology problem, there are of course a variety of
people who object to any evolution by natural selection culture propagation
theories. These include hard-core sociobiologists, certain Marxists, and
various people who would rather emphasize individual psychology over mass
psychology.
I notice that you are apparently writing from a physics department, so I
will use an analogy to illustrate the kind of terminology problem we have.
Quantum chromodynamics as a theoretical paradigm did not depend upon the
word "quark" being chosen as a name for a class of particles. Given that it
was, imagine that various schools of thought arose: some say quarks are
never in a hadron, others say they are always in hadrons (at least at
observed temperatures). Others say that "quarks" consist of the slightly
more directly observable but still abstractly defined "behaviors" of
hadrons. Still others say that quarks are found among the "artifacts" of
hadrons, such as hydrogen bubble trails, wire chamber impulses,
scintilations, etc. Still others allow for combinations of the above,
saying that the bubble trails, the "behaviors," and the hadrons are all
"quark vehicles." The OED might have weighed in by discovering and
publishing some common element of meaning running between all the popularly
spreading "quark" definitions, and so on. If that had happened, we might
reasonably expect someone like Gardner to call the whole terminology
situation a mess. We also might expect Gardner and others not to even see
any distinct theoretical paradigm amid all the terminological chaos. Faced
with such a situation, physicists might have been better off surrendering
the word "quark" to the masses and expressing quantum chromodynamics in
different words. I realize that there is no isomorphism between quantum
chromodynamics and evolutionary culture propagation paradigms, but none is
needed to see how terminology can work for or against a scientific endeavor
or class of paradigms.
In any case, I don't think we are in a position to presume that all "meme
critics" are simply feeling threatened by our more powerful paradigm. In
many cases, the word "meme" has not even helped convey a powerful paradigm
to them, due to its weakened usefulness in communication.
--Aaron Lynch
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