The selfish gene meme

From: Price, Ilfryn (I.Price@shu.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Dec 05 2001 - 16:33:12 GMT

  • Next message: William Benzon: "Re: Definition please" 

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA04418 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 5 Dec 2001 16:38:10 GMT
Message-ID: <B5EDC67328A3D311B0F70006293884CA03919588@electra.shu.ac.uk>
From: "Price, Ilfryn" <I.Price@shu.ac.uk>
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: The selfish gene meme
Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 16:33:12 -0000
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    Thank you John for this example which for Andrew (he coined the term) and me is a example of a general phenomenon - lack of fidelity of
    meaning as a good trick (sensu Dennet)in meme replication space.

    'gene' is a selfish meme it seems.

    > >
    > Exactly this sort of confusion arises in the context of "gene" -
    > initially it was well-defined (by Johannsen, IIRC) as a Mendelian
    > hereditary factor (ie, anything that assorted in the
    > Mendelian ratio).
    > As the context broadened, it was gradually less exact, and
    > people had to
    > coin new terms like cistron, intron, codon, and the like to
    > become more
    > exact.

    If

    If Price
    Facilities Management Graduate Centre
    Sheffield Hallam University
    Unit 7, Science Park, Sheffield S1 1WB
    P +44 [0]114 225 4032
    F +44 [0]114 225 4038
    M +44 [0]7976 422 354
    http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/urs/fmgc
    http://www.occupier.org
    http://members.aol.com/ifprice/ifresch.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

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Dec 05 2001 - 16:44:29 GMT