From: Scott Chase (osteopilus@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat 01 Oct 2005 - 02:34:44 GMT
In Dawkins's book _A Devil's Chaplain_ he has an
endnote where he says:
[bq] "Completely unknown to me when I coined 'meme' in
1976, the German biologist Richard Semon wrote a book
called *Die Mneme* (English translation *The Mneme*
(London, Allen & Unwin, 1921)) in which he adopted the
'mneme' coined in 1870 by the Austrian physiologist
Ewald Hering. I first learned of this in a review of
*The Selfish Gene* by Peter Medawar, who described the
'mneme' as 'a word of conscious etymological
rectitude'" [eq]
I've read Herind's 1870 essay "Memory as a general
function of organized matter" in English translation
and have skimmed the original German version "Uber das
Gedachtnis als eine allgemeine Funktion der
organisierten Materie" trying to corroborate what
Dawkins says above to no avail. Dawkins should have
provided a quote of Hering to substantiate his claim.
If someone could provide a quote of the original
German Hering essay that supports Dawkins's claim. I
will stand corrected. I can find no German words that
come close to "mneme". Otherwise I disputte what
Dawkins says and assume Semon to have coined "mneme",
though he was indebted to Hering for much of the
organic memory idea. I've been in touch with Daniel
Schacter about this matter.
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