Re: Lorenz on the "mneme"

From: John S. Wilkins (j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au)
Date: Mon 04 Apr 2005 - 04:20:09 GMT

  • Next message: Scott Chase: "Re: Lorenz on the "mneme""

    Scott Chase wrote:

    >--- "John S. Wilkins" <j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au> wrote:
    >
    >
    >
    >>Scott Chase wrote:
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>>I found this little aside by Lorenz most
    >>>
    >>>
    >>interesting,
    >>
    >>
    >>>given that, despite his dark National Socialism
    >>>related past, he reached the prominence as an
    >>>ethologist to get a Nobel Prize. Lorenz was talking
    >>>about learning and memory when he wrote during his
    >>>stint in a Russian POW camp (p. 163):
    >>>
    >>>[KL] "In an objective sense, a "mneme"- a memory of
    >>>what has happened previously- is already present
    >>>wherever the behavior of an organism is influenced
    >>>
    >>>
    >>*by
    >>
    >>
    >>>what it has just done*." [KL]
    >>>
    >>>I wonder how Lorenz had been introduced to the
    >>>
    >>>
    >>concept
    >>
    >>
    >>>of "mneme" (the "mneme" meme)?. I see no apparent
    >>>reference to Semon nor is Semon's work in the
    >>>bibliography.
    >>>
    >>>Here we see an ethologist using the term "mneme".
    >>>
    >>>
    >>I'm
    >>
    >>
    >>>not sure how often this word was used in
    >>>
    >>>
    >>ethological
    >>
    >>
    >>>circles. Dawkins himself emerged from the
    >>>
    >>>
    >>ethological
    >>
    >>
    >>>scene, so this could be an interesting thing to
    >>>ponder. If its ethological use was confined to
    >>>Lorenz's Russian Manuscript then it was lost until
    >>>unearthed in 1990.
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>
    >>Dawkins' advisor was Niko Tinbergen, who was a very
    >>good friend of Lorenz's:
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/scientist/niko_tinbergen.html
    >
    >
    >>And Semon's views were widely read and discussed in
    >>the period before
    >>the war, as you would know. His term "engramm" was
    >>adopted pretty
    >>widely. So I suspect you have uncovered a direct
    >>link, a smoking gun, in
    >>the conneciton from Semon to Dawkins.
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/Projekte/plex/PLex/Lemmata/E-Lemma/Engramm.htm
    >
    >
    >>http://www.textlog.de/13520.html [from 1927]
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >Thanks Dr. Wilkins.
    >
    It's OK. The sheen has worn off the diploma now... call me "John", or
    "Dr Arsehole", whichever suits.

    >I'm not sure I'd call it a smoking
    >gun, but it's suggestive like John Laurent's article
    >in 1999:
    >
    >http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1999/vol3/laurent_j.html
    >
    >I wasn't expecting to see "mneme" referred to in
    >Lorenz's text. I find his Russian Manuscript a great
    >read, especially the way he evolutionizes Kantian
    >philosophy.
    >
    >
    His "Kantian synthetic apriori = evolutionary a posteriori" riff is the foundation for evolutionary epistemology. It's very influential. I'm going to ckeck this book out. Is it the one you referenced? [Never mind
    - just ordered a copy off ABEBOOKS.]

    If someone uses "mneme" who is the leader in a field of a student who later writes "meme", then I think you have sufficient causal chain. It is inconceivable that Dawkins had never heard it. But that doesn't mean he did it consciously...

    >You should look at it for his views on systematics, if
    >you haven't already.
    >
    What's he say (in brief)? I haven't heard of anything from him.

    > He does make me cringe though.
    >There are parts of the book that are questionable like
    >when he starts talking about the effects of
    >domestication.
    >
    Well, there was a lot of confusion at that time. Not helped by the Nazi
    /Volksphilosophie/, I guess. Kant delivered a lecture entitled "On the various races of Man" in which he says some stuff about classifying by genealogy rather than appearance, which is pretty sensible (c1775, I think - until I get a *civilised *computer I can't access my notes), which would be fine except that Blumenbach took it further and developed the "modern" racist typology out of it.

    -- 
    John S. Wilkins
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    Biohumanities Project
    School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
    The University of Queensland
    Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
    Tel +61 7 3365 6348
    Mobile 0418 543 856
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