From: Bill Hall (bill.hall@hotkey.net.au)
Date: Mon 31 Mar 2003 - 12:34:20 GMT
Lawry,
Beer's books are on my desk, with Brain of the Firm quite heavily annotated,
but I haven't encountered the Miller work yet. Perhaps that is due to my ego
as a biologist.
If you want some real hair raising reading about memes in autopoiesis, read
Nelson and Winter's 1982 An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change - and
especially their chapter on Skills where they discuss the existence and
evolutionary significance of tacit knowledge at the organizational level. Of
course, they apparently were unaware of the ideas of either memetics or
autopoiesis when they wrote their book. Involvement with Santa Fe Institute
came only later.
Anyone interested in some further exploration of these ideas should
subscribe to Critical_Cafe http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Critical_Cafe/ on
the Karl Popper Web - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Critical_Cafe/. There is
a lot of quite useful overlap.
Regards,
Bill Hall
------------------------------------------
Information is not knowledge
Knowledge is not wisdom
Wisdom is not truth
Truth is not beauty
Beauty is not love
Love is not music
Music is THE BEST
-----------------------------
(Zappa - Packard Goose)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence DeBivort" <debivort@umd5.umd.edu>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 10:11 PM
Subject: RE: memetics-digest V1 #1319 - are memes alive?
> Nice summary, Bill, and nice to see the mention of Varela and Maturana,
two
> of the most useful thinkers of recent years.
>
> I would add Jim Miller's LIVING SYSTEMS THEORY to the mix, and Stafford
> Beer's work as well -- both represent extraordinary advances.
>
> Cheers,
> Lawry
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk [mailto:fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk]On Behalf
> > Of Bill Hall
> > Sent: Mon, March 31, 2003 5:55 AM
> > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > Subject: Re: memetics-digest V1 #1319 - are memes alive?
> >
> >
> > I'll amplify a comment I made last week about whether memes can be
> > considered to be living.
> >
> > To me the closest thing there is to a living meme is the self-producing
> > (i.e., autopoietic)organization, which could be interpreted as a
> > self-producing assembly of mutually catalytic memes.
> >
> > The theory of autopoiesis as a definition for the property of
> > life was first
> > introduced to the English language in 1980 by Humbeto Maturana
> > and Francisco
> > Varela in their book Autopoiesis and Cognition. A more recent work is
The
> > Tree of Knowledge, 1988. Personally, I think their structure is quite
good
> > because I was using a very similar definition as an heuristic when I was
> > teaching a variety of basic biology courses in the 1970's.
> >
> > Georg von Krogh and Johan Roos 1995 applied the theory to
> > organizations, in
> > their book Organizational Epistemology. Here they give a neat
> > checklist for
> > determining whether an entity should be considered to be autopoietic:
> >
> > o Identifiably bounded (membranes, tags). In other words,
> > if it can't be clearly distinguished from its environment
> > it isn't a discrete entity.
> >
> > o Identifiable components within the boundary (complex)
> >
> > o Mechanistic (i.e., metabolism/cybernetic processes)
> >
> > o System boundaries internally determined (self reference)
> >
> > o System intrinsically produces own components (self production)
> >
> > o Self-produced components are necessary and sufficient to produce the
> > system (autonomy).
> >
> > Only where all these properties exist together can the entity be
> > considered
> > to be living.
> >
> > Memes can certainly participate in forming a complex self
> > productive system,
> > but as I understand the term, one meme on its own is like a virus (a
small
> > number of genes wrapped in an bomb casing) - it has no life on
> > its own, but
> > in the right circumstances it can explode and subvert an existing
> > autopoietic system to make more of its own kind. (An analogue to a
suicide
> > bomber?)
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Bill Hall
> > ------------------------------------------
> > Information is not knowledge
> > Knowledge is not wisdom
> > Wisdom is not truth
> > Truth is not beauty
> > Beauty is not love
> > Love is not music
> > Music is THE BEST
> > -----------------------------
> > (Zappa - Packard Goose)
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Dace" <edace@earthlink.net>
> > To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
> > Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 8:28 AM
> > Subject: Re: memetics-digest V1 #1319
> >
> >
> > >
> > > > From: "Scott Chase" <ecphoric@hotmail.com>
> > > >
> > > > > > > > Memes alive? Have we resurrected animism?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >If I attributed life to animals would you accuse me of animism?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > No. Butam I wrong in thinking you are attributing life to memes
in
> > the
> > > > > > literal sense (not the marginally less absurd metaphoric
> > sense)? I'd
> > > say
> > > > > > that a palm tree or a porpoise are alive. An idea is not alive.
A
> > > virus
> > > > > > strains ones views on what life is, and I'd probably lean
> > towards no
> > > hee
> > > > > > too. A viral idea ("meme") if this exists, doesn't seem
> > to be a good
> > > > > > candidate for being alive.
> > > > >
> > > > >At the very least, viruses participate in life processes. The same
> > could
> > > > >be said of memes. After all, the mind/brain is as alive as any
other
> > > organ.
> > > > >A meme, i.e. a "selfish" idea, lives and evolves in relation to the
> > > cultural
> > > > >environment in the same sense that an animal lives and evolves in
> > > relation
> > > > >to the natural environment.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > But I thought a meme was akin to a gene, not an animal.
> > > >
> > > > An animal is alive. Is a gene alive?
> > >
> > > This is really opening up a can of worms.
> > >
> > > As "systems" theorist Paul Weiss argued many years ago, there's no
clear
> > > definition between life and nonlife. Any self-organized, dynamic
system
> > > that perpetuates the conditions of its existence can be
> > considered alive.
> > > In recent times biology has tended to arbitrarily divide things off
> > between
> > > those systems that utilize genes and those that do not. For
> > reductionistic
> > > biology, it's not simply that genes are alive but that they are life
> > itself.
> > > It's the gene that makes you alive, and the point of your
> > existence is to
> > > spread your genes. As Susan Blackmore reasons, if an animal is a gene
> > > machine, then a human is a meme machine. It's the particles, whether
of
> > > bodies or cultures, that determine the higher levels of structure.
> > >
> > > I'm perfectly willing to grant agency to genes and memes. Not simply
> > living
> > > aspects of larger systems, they help shape those systems and are thus
> > doubly
> > > "alive." What's most intriguing about memetics is its
> > vindication of the
> > > founding principles of modern psychology. We are driven by
unconscious
> > > "forces" carrying their own momentum. But that doesn't mean we
> > don't have
> > > our own agency as conscious beings. It's a complex interaction of
> > different
> > > levels of determinacy, from meme to group.
> > >
> > > Memes in the domain of human consciousness are akin to animals in the
> > wilds.
> > > This is essentially what Dawkins was saying, except that, as a
> > reductionist,
> > > he thinks what evolves (and truly lives) is not the whole organism but
> > > merely its genes. For him the genome stands in for the whole
> > animal. But
> > > we need not be bound by this predilection. Memes could just as
> > easily be
> > > regarded as species of beliefs competing in the jungles of the mind
with
> > > other such species.
> > >
> > > Ted
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ===============================================================
> > > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> > > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> > > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> > >
> >
> >
> > ===============================================================
> > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> >
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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