Meme-physics

From: Philip Jonkers (ephilution@attbi.com)
Date: Tue 22 Oct 2002 - 06:27:55 GMT

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    > Hello,
    >
    > As I am a completely new kid on this block allow me to introduce myself
    very
    > briefly at first.
    >
    > My name is Darek Glazewski. I am a sociologist from Poland and am
    currently
    > working on my doctoral dissertation. A few years ago I came across the
    term
    > 'meme' and I instantly got interested. Of course, the first book I had
    read
    > about memetics in was Dawkins' Selfish Gene.
    >
    > My master's diploma paper focused on the role language plays in social
    life.
    > But I also added an additional chapter introducing a new approach to
    > studying culture which, of course, was memetics. Since then I have
    published
    > a few articles in our university's annual anthology and one of the
    articles
    > was devoted to memetics. Frankly speaking, it is extremely difficult to
    find
    > a professor who can/wants to review papers in this field in Poland. But
    this
    > is not my point here. So let me get to the point.
    >
    > First of all, I am going to write my dissertation in memetics. I am trying
    > to find someone or someone's work which aimed at carrying out a linguistic
    > or should I say sociolinguistic research (e.g. of slang, idiomatic
    > expressions, slogans etc) from the perspective of the memetic theory.
    > Therefore, I would be really obliged if you could help get in touch with a
    > person who has already tried to do it.
    >
    > Then, I am also interested in getting in touch with somebody who has tried
    > to analyze memes as forms of energy. Information can be (according to 2nd
    > law of thermodynamics) expressed as energy. Should memes be considered
    ways
    > of transferring information and/or conveying messages, I claim they should
    > be presentable as forms of energy. Energy which is capable of influencing
    > largely human mind and counsciousness and, in a way, as many forms of
    > energy, it should be capable of shaping/reorganising matter.
    >
    > I strongly believe that analysing memes as portions of energy and finding
    a
    > way of combining memetics with Shannon's information theory as well as 2nd
    > law of thermodynamics (growing entropy) would take memetics into a more
    > scientific than philosophical direction.
    >
    > I will be glad if anyone could help me. I am sorry if my message doesn't
    > comply with some internal netiquette of this discussion group. I should
    > blame it on my being an absolute novice here. I will reaaly appreciate any
    > feedback and guidance. I am strongly convinced that memtics has a real
    > potential as a descriptive and explanatory tool but I simply think that it
    > has to follow a straight path created by contemporary methodology (much as
    I
    > am aware that this methodology may simply be of memetic nature or, as Kuhn
    > put it, it may be a paradigm waiting for a revolution :-)) )
    >
    > Best regards,
    > Darek Glazewski

    It sounds to me that you want to revamp memetics into a more physical theory. Perhaps we should consider baptizing it meme-physics. I agree with you that memes are all about information but I fear it would be a formidable task to recast the whole theory in terms of energy, information and entropy. Perhaps you may want to have a look what the fellers at genetics have done already, after all one of memetics' floaters is analogy with genetics. If you want to describe memetics as a physics you have to describe evolution in terms of physics. People working on evolutionary models
    (of whatever phenomenon) may be of help to you. Is there a Derek Gatherer in the house?

    Anyway welcome aboard the band-wagon called memetics Darek, and oh no need to be apologetic regarding topics and such. Basically anythings goes on this list with the exception of name-calling and insulting pink unicorns...

    Phil

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