Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA03679 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 17 Feb 2001 19:12:04 GMT Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 10:49:19 -0800 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Darwinian evolution vs memetic evolution To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3A8EC7AF.95BD4A91@pacbell.net> Organization: Saybrook Graduate School X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;YIP052400} (Win95; U) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Accept-Language: en References: <5.0.2.1.0.20010217113823.021498a0@pop3.htcomp.net> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Mark,
> > First off, how does one pply the notion of a germ-line to "memes",
> > beyond saying that biologically speaking, it hasn't been shown that ideas
> > can pass from soma to germ cells to be inherited by the progeny.
>
> As usual, I'm using the neural-meme, so the problem of ideas passing to
> soma is not a problem. In neural-meme theory, the neural system is
> partially self-organizing due to energy being passed through the system
> (energy flow is produces self-organization of the media it passes
> through). The genetic framework provides the substrate, the
> self-organization produces the earliest memory organization. As the neural
> memory gets larger and more refined, it starts recording memories of
> environmental stimuli, allowing cultural replication.
>
> Ideas are the phenotypes of neural-memes, memory organization (neural-meme
> based) is the genotype.
But the idea of a memetic germ line is still a problem. Memory
organization does not pass directly from person to person, while genes
and chromosomes do pass directly from parent to child.
Thus, the phenotype-genotype distinction you make does not serve the
same purpose in memetics as the similar distinction does in genetics.
That is why the Darwinian model for genetics does not hold in memetics.
Best,
Bill
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