Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id EAA12592 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 12 Feb 2002 04:13:56 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020211230841.02c87b00@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 23:10:35 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Re: Words and memes In-Reply-To: <4A9827F6-1F08-11D6-AA31-003065A0F24C@harvard.edu> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20020208123256.03681bc0@pop.cogeco.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
At 10:59 AM 11/02/02 -0500, Wade wrote:
snip
>Another instance of the Hari Seldon psychohistory mystique.
Since you mention Hari . . . . You can see the rest of the article by going
into google groups, use original in subject, and Keith Henson as
author. Keith
*******************8888
H. Keith Henson, Feb. 1997
MEMETICS AND THE MODULAR-MIND
AUGUST 1987
{Lead-in by Stanley Schmidt}
In his Foundation stories, Isaac Asimov proposed a future science
called "psychohistory," in which the collective behavior of human
populations could be predicted with high precision. In our time, the
social sciences are often viewed as sharply different from the
physical sciences because they cannot do much predicting. Is this an
inherent limitation on the social sciences, or might it be possible to
put them on a truly predictive basis by means that have not been
formulated yet? There are a number of lines of research suggesting
that it might. One of them is based on the "meme": a concept created
by analogy with the gene and describing an entity supposed to behave
in a somewhat similar way.
H. Keith Henson was one of the founders, and the first president
of the L5 Society, which has since become part of the National Space
Society. He describes himself as a carrier for several highly
infectious memes relating to space colonies, nanotechnolaay, personal
computers, and cult-watching.
*****************************
SCIENCE fiction writers do not always manage to stay ahead of
science. One significant concept showed up in the scientific
literature 13 years before Charles Sheffield and Arthur Clarke
simultaneously wrote stories that incorporated the "Skyhook" or
"Beanstalk." But in projecting a science of social prediction, SF
writers have been far ahead of the scientists. Isaac Asimov based the
entire Foundation series on "Psychohistory." Robert Heinlein
developed the theme of predicting social movement in his Future
History stories, especially in Revolt in 2100, Methuselah's Children,
and in the unwritten saga of Reverend Nehemiah Scudder.*
[ * "First Prophet," President of the United States, destroyer of
its Constitution, and founder of the Theocracy. If this makes you
vaguely uncomfortable, it is probably because you have been reading
about fundamentalist preacher/presidential candidate Pat Robertson.
As the Ayatollah Khomeini recently demonstrated, fundamentalist
religion and politics can make a nasty mix.]
Science fiction aside, we don't have a science of social
prediction. Until recently, we haven't even had much in the way of
theories. Our continual surprise at the development of cults,
religions, wars, fads, and other social movements is a notable
exception to the steady progress humans have made in building better
models of our environment. When you consider the suffering associated
with some social movements, our lack of good models must he considered
a major deficiency.
A successful theory of the development of social movements will
have to provide a unifying theory for events that make up much of the
evening news. It will have to discover common features that lie
behind the diverse trends causing problems in Nicaragua, South Africa,
Northern Ireland, and the Middle East. A good theory should be able
to evaluate the danger or lack of danger from the LaRouche
organization, whose accidental win in the Democratic primary forced
Adlai Stevenson III to run as an independent in the Illinois
governor's race. (This cult more recently made the news when the FBI
raided its offices in the wake of alleged massive credit card frauds.)
It should be able to produce a plausible model for the breakup of the
Rajneesh cult (whose Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh accumulated 93 Rolls
Royces before abandoning his Oregon community). The theory should be
able to predict the conditions under which Turkey will be subverted by
a fundamentalist version of Islam similar to that which led to so much
grief in Iran.
A tall order! But an emerging field of study, _memetics_, holds
just such promise. Sometimes thought of as "germ theory applied to
ideas," memetics is an outgrowth of evolutionary biology. It provides
models where social movements are seen as side effects of infectious
ideas that spread among people in a way mathematically identical to
the way epidemic disease spreads. It has been noticed, for example,
that use rates for various drugs, most recently "crack," have closely
followed epidemic-like curves that seem to be as oblivious to the
efforts of authorities as the Black Death was in 1348. At a deeper
level, research in neuroscience and artificial intelligence is
starting to develop an understanding of why we are susceptible to
"infectious information," both the benign and the deadly.
snip
===============================================================
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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