Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id GAA29250 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 3 Dec 2001 06:42:10 GMT Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 17:37:39 +1100 Subject: Re: Wilkins on the meme:engram relation Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed From: John Wilkins <wilkins@wehi.edu.au> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: <200112030558.fB35wh722400@mail8.bigmailbox.com> Message-Id: <3EFF4F4D-E7B8-11D5-AE87-003065B4D1F0@wehi.edu.au> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.475) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Monday, December 3, 2001, at 04:58 PM, Joe Dees wrote:
>
>
>> <AaronLynch@aol.com>Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 00:41:57 EST
>> Re: Wilkins on the meme:engram relation memetics@mmu.ac.ukReply-To:
>> memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>>
>> In a message dated 12/2/2001 8:21:25 PM Central Standard Time, John S
>> Wilkins
>> <wilkins@wehi.edu.au> writes:
>>
>>> The Kingdom of heaven is at hand. I agree with Aaron without
>>> reservation :-)
>>>
>>> The whole neologism of meme is exactly what Aaron says - a
>>> distraction.
>>> ...
> I disagree, precisely because several related areas in disparate
> disciplines may be conjoined by applying the term 'meme' to their
> relata. I have seen no other term, neo or not, that promises to do
> this. I also maintain that once the memetic life-cycle is understood
> to include both internal mushroom and external spore, that the
> confusion that has been unfortunately and unfairly attached to the term
> 'meme' will quite naturally and rightly abate.
Joe,
Science is not advanced by semantic distinctions, although it is often
advanced by extending terms beyond their breaking point. In this case,
however, the entire debate about "what is a meme" has been a quibble
over a word, and we have tended instead to lose sight of the fact that
what really counts is the entire ancillary conceptual apparatus of
evolution: populational modelling instead of a typological notion of
classes and institutions; random drift and selection (and fitness);
common descent; "strategies" like arms races, Prisoner's dilemmas, game
theory in general; and also some other analogues that are not yet
properly elaborated like phylogenetic reconstruction, an analogue for
biogeography (sociogeography), socioecology (economics?), and so forth.
And there's a whole philosophy of explanation and science that we can
transfer across from evolutionary biology as well. But all of this is
obscured by definitional debates over a term, and at the same time that
term is being cheapened by marketing and poppsych and popsociology texts.
I totally disagree that there is *a* (or *the*) memetic lifecycle, any
more than there is *the* organismic lifecycle. Evolution, and selection,
happen over a range of biological and nonbiological substrates, and
developmental trajectories are themselves the subject of evolution.
Metaphors about metaphytes, metazooans or any other form of life or
near-life (viruses, sorry Aaron) are at *best* only suggestive
metaphors, and at worse they blinker us in our expectations. But even
the biological world is more complex than the undergraduate textbooks
allow, so why would we expect there to be a global memetic cycle?
-- John Wilkins Head Communication Services, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne Australia Personal page: <http://users.bigpond.com/thewilkins/darwiniana.html>=============================================================== 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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