Jump to content

Meme: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Velps (talk | contribs)
617 edits
→Propagation of memes: cleaning up tags a little
No edit summary
Line 1: Line 1:
<font size="720"> SO I HERD U LIEK MEMES</font>
{{Otheruses}}
{{Mergefrom|Memetics|date=June 2007}}
{{original research}}

<!-- This introductory section aims to give a sharp and solid basic understanding of the meme concept to the new reader, thus contributors and editors should express themselves in SHARPEST manner using the MINIMUM POSSIBLE words. -->

A '''meme''', ({{IPA2|mi:m}}) as defined within [[memetics|memetic]] [[theory]], comprises a unit of [[culture|cultural]] [[information]], the building block of [[Sociocultural evolution|cultural evolution]] or [[cultural diffusion|diffusion]] that propagates from one mind to another [[analogy|analogous]]ly to the way in which a [[gene]] propagates from one organism to another as a unit of [[genetics|genetic]] information and of biological [[evolution]].<ref>*Lasn, Kalle (2000) ''Culture jam''. New York: Quill. p.123</ref> Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called ''[[memeplex]]es'' (meme complexes).

[[Biologist]] and evolutionary theorist [[Richard Dawkins]] coined the term ''meme'' in 1976.<ref>Richard Dawkins, ''[[The Selfish Gene]]'', 11. Memes:the new replicators, Oxford University, 1976, second edition, December 1989, ISBN 0-19-217773-7; April 1992, ISBN 0-19-857519-X; trade paperback, September 1990, ISBN 0-19-286092-5</ref> He gave as examples [[earworm|tunes]], catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.

Meme theorists contend that memes evolve by [[natural selection]] similarly to [[Charles Darwin| Darwinian]] [[biology|biological]] [[evolution]] through the processes of [[variation]], [[mutation]], [[competition]], and inheritance influencing an organism's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become [[extinction|extinct]], while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, [[mutation|mutate]]. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."<ref name="Kelly">
{{cite book |author=Kelly, Kevin |title=Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world |publisher=Addison-Wesley |location=Boston |year=1994 |pages=360 |isbn=0-201-48340-8 |oclc= |doi=
}}

<blockquote>
"But if we consider culture as its own self organizing system,- a system with its own agenda and pressure to survive- then the history of humanity gets even more interesting. As [[Richard Dawkins]] has shown, systems of self-replicating ideas or memes can quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviours. I assign no higher motive to a cultural entity than the primitive drive to reproduce itself and modify its environment to aid its spread. One way the self organizing system can do this is by consuming human biological resources."
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"In [[Danny Hillis]]'s terminology, civilized humans are 'the world's most successful symbionts' — culture and biology behaving as mutually benificial parasites for each other."
</blockquote>
</ref>

A short story written in 1876 by [[Mark Twain]], ''[[A Literary Nightmare]]'', describes his encounter with a jingle so "catchy" that it plays over and over in his mind until he finally sings it out loud and infects others (also known as an [[earworm]]).

{{wiktionary}}

== Origins and concepts ==

[[Image:The Selfish Gene3.jpg|thumb|Richard Dawkins' ''[[The Selfish Gene]]'' first introduced the meme concept.]]

[[Richard Dawkins]] coined the term ''meme'', which first came into popular use with the publication of his book ''[[The Selfish Gene]]'' in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "[[gene]]". The concept received relatively little attention until the late 1980s,{{Fact|date=August 2007}} when several academics took it up, notably the American philosopher and cognitive scientist [[Daniel Dennett]], who promoted the idea firstly in his book on the [[philosophy of mind]], ''[[Consciousness Explained]]'' (1991), and then in ''[[Darwin's Dangerous Idea]]'' (1995). [[Robert Anton Wilson]] also discussed the concept in his writings.{{Fact|date=June 2007}}

Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity (such as a song, an idea or a religion) that an observer might consider a [[replicator]]. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for an hypothesis of [[cultural evolution]], analogous to the theory of biological [[evolution]] based on genes.

Considerable controversy surrounds the word ''meme'' and its associated field, [[memetics]], not accepted as an academic [[discipline]]. In part this arises because a number of possible (though not mutually exclusive) interpretations of the nature of the concept have arisen:
# The least controversial claim suggests that memes provide a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's eye view — ''as if'' memes, or the people who carry them, acted to maximise their own replication and survival — can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Dawkins himself seems to have favoured this approach.{{Fact|date=June 2007}}
# Other theorists, such as [[Francis Heylighen]], have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics in order for people to regard it as a real and useful [[scientific discipline]].{{Fact|date=June 2007}} Given the nebulous (and in many cases subjective) nature of many memes, providing such an empirical grounding has to date proved challenging.{{Fact|date=June 2007}} However, a recent study by [[Mikael Sandberg]], further elaborates the memetic approach to empirical studies of innovation diffusion in organisations. <ref>"The Evolution of IT Innovations in Swedish Organizations: A Darwinian Critique of ‘Lamarckian’ Institutional Economics", ''Journal of Evolutionary Economics'' (on-line 2006, in print 2007)</ref>
# A third approach, exemplified by Dennett and by [[Susan Blackmore]] in her book ''The Meme Machine'' (1999), seeks to place memes at the centre of a radical and counter-intuitive [[naturalism (philosophy)|naturalistic]] [[theory of mind]] and of [[personal identity (philosophy)|personal identity]]. [[Evan Louis Sheehan]] uses the hierarchical model of [[cerebral cortex|cortical]] architecture proposed by [[Jeff Hawkins]] to develop such a memetic theory of mind in his book ''[[The Mocking Memes: A Basis for Automated Intelligence]]''.

=== Etymology ===

Historically, the notion of a unit of [[social evolution]], and a similar term (from Greek ''mneme'', meaning "memory"), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German [[evolution]]ary [[biologist]] [[Richard Semon]] titled ''Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen'' (loosely translated as "Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings"). According to the [[Oxford English Dictionary|OED]], the word ''mneme'' appears in [[English (language)|English]] in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: ''The Mneme''.

According to Dawkins, who coined the word "meme" without knowing about ''mnemes'', ''meme'' represents a shortened form of ''mimeme'' (from Greek ''mimos'', "mimic"). Dawkins said he wanted "a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like ''gene''".<ref>Dawkins, Richard, ''The Selfish Gene'' (Oxford University Press, USA; 3rd edition, April 24, 2006, ISBN 0-1992-9114-4), p. 192.

To quote Dawkins more extensively:
{{quotation|We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of ''imitation''. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to ''meme''. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word ''même''. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.|Richard Dawkins, ''The Selfish Gene''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 ISBN 0-19-217773-7 page 192}}</ref>

=== Dawkins' genetic analogy ===

Richard Dawkins introduced the term after writing that evolution depended not on the particular [[molecular genetics|chemical basis]] of [[genetics]], but only on the existence of a [[self-replication|self-replicating]] unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the [[gene]]. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought might prove useful in explaining [[human behavior]] and cultural evolution.

This [[analogy]] suggests that the definition of a meme should refer to the physical structure, or abstract code representing that structure, representing a real idea as observed in situ. Genes do not depend upon their transfer for their current existence; they may need a definite, although not necessarily unique physical structure. Similarly, a book, play, song, or computer file might replicate a meme.{{Fact|date=June 2007}}

[[William H. Calvin]] offers the concept of a Darwinian process in the generation of conscious thought, based on his theory of resonant electrochemistry in the [[neocortex]].{{Fact|date=June 2007}}

Dawkins himself, in a speech on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of ''The Selfish Gene'', described his motivation for postulating memes: he portrayed the idea not so much as an attempt at creating an account for cultural complexity, but rather as seeking something with which the selfish-genetic mechanism would still work with unreliable replicators:

{{quote|Next question might be, does the information have to be molecular at all? Memes. This is not something that I’ve ever wanted to push as a theory of human culture, but I originally proposed it as a kind of… almost an anti-gene, to make the point that Darwinism requires accurate replicators with phenotypic power, but they don’t necessarily have to be genes. What if they were computer viruses? They hadn’t been invented when I wrote ''The Selfish Gene'' so I went straight for memes, units of cultural inheritance.|Richard Dawkins}}{{Fact|date=June 2007}} <!-- NOTE: Direct quotation requires cite to specific page.-->

=== Memes as discrete units ===

Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", memeticists in general promote varying definitions of the concept of the meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics.

Although memeticists speak of memes as discrete units, this need not imply that thoughts somehow become [[quantize]]d or that "[[atom]]ic" ideas exist which one cannot break down into smaller pieces. The meme as a unit simply provides a convenient way of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word was first uttered. The "word itself" meme will most likely survive many more generations (after transmission alone or in other sentences) than the "speech in its entirety" meme will survive (due to errors of memory, abridged versions, etc.){{or}}

This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a self-replicating set of code. The gene in this definition does not consist of a set number of [[nucleotide]]s, but simply a collection of nucleotides (possibly in many different locations on the [[Deoxyribonucleic acid|DNA]]) that replicate together and code for some set of behaviors or body parts.

In 1981 biologists [[Charles J. Lumsden]] and [[Edward Osborne Wilson]] published a theory of gene/culture co-evolution in the book ''Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process''. They argued that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic [[memory]]. Wilson later adopted the term ''meme'' as the best existing name for the fundamental unit of cultural inheritance and elaborated upon the fundamental role of memes in unifying the [[Natural science|natural]] and [[social sciences]] in his book ''[[Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge]]''.

=== Memeplexes ===

Much of the study of memes focuses on groups of memes called ''[[memeplex]]es'' (also known as ''meme complexes'' or as ''memecomplexes'') — such as religious, cultural, or political doctrines and systems. Memeplexes contain mutually supportive memes that together become more evolutionarily successful. These memeplexes may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes which, if they fit with a memeplex, can "piggyback" on that success. Memeplexes of religion provide a commonly-cited example.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} In the case of Christianity, the theory suggests, the Christian memeplex evolved from Jewish religious teachings to form, among others, the Catholic church.<ref>
For discussion and relevant references on the Jewish origins of Christianity, see [[Origins of Christianity]].
</ref>
Following the [[East-West Schism|schism]] between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and later [[Protestant Reformation| splits]] giving rise to various Protestant churches, various people have added and deleted individual memes, resulting in the formation of completely different memeplexes (religions/[[sect]]s) within the basic umbrella of Christianity,<ref>
For a generalized account of the origins and historical development of religious sects, see the [[Max Weber| Weber]]ian account of [[church-sect typology]].
</ref>
as well as within (for example) the Catholic,<ref>
Note the existence of the [[Old Catholic Church]], for example; and arguably [[Anglo-Catholicism]].
</ref>
Orthodox,<ref>
Numerous examples of and references to many sects of just the Russian Orthodox tradition appear in the article on [[Old Believers]].
</ref>
and Protestant traditions.<ref>
The article on [[Protestantism]] provides an overview of major sub-groups within the Protestant fold.
</ref>
(Without some concept of cultural evolution, one might have to postulate repeated and contradictory divine/demonic [[revelation]]s in order to account for the [[development of religion| historical record of religions]] and for the existence of [[Christian denomination| denomination]]s.)

=== Transmission ===

Life forms transmit information vertically{{Fact|date=August 2007}} (from generation to generation) via replication of genes. Memes can also transmit information vertically by replication.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Some life forms can spread from their host horizontally, within groups of contemporaries. Memes also spread from hosts in such a manner. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time: [[Copernicus]] re-discovered the ancient heliocentric views of [[Aristarchus of Samos|Aristarchus]], but Aristarchian memes survive.{{Fact|date=June 2007}} One can view memeplexes as assisting the survival and transmission of memes in a symbiotic relationship.{{Fact|date=June 2007}}

Memes spread by the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. For example, the [[fashion]]-value that "less is more" spreads through the [[behavior]] of people dressing down in understated clothes and acting superior. This behavior then has the effect of showing others a real-life example of this fashion-value, thereby conveying to them the fashion statement that "less is more".{{Fact|date=June 2007}} Verbal transmission can supplement or replace this imitative method.

Those interested in tracking how memes spread through culture may use [[memetracker]]s, [[websites]] that allow one to see how people receive, use, and spread new information on the [[World Wide Web|Web]]. Cameron Marlowe's [[Blogdex]] project pioneered research on this topic.

== Memetics ==
{{main|Memetics}}

Memetics, the study of memes, remains a controversial field among many [[scientist]]s and [[skeptic]]s. Memetics originated when Richard Dawkins reduced the process of biological genetic evolution to its most fundamental unit: the replicator (or gene). Dawkins, in a search for parallels and other things that he might classify as replicators, suggested that the information and ideas in [[brain]]s — [[culture]], for example — could function as replicators as well. [[Computer software]] may represent another form of replicator with which evolution may eventually build grand things, whether socially as in the [[open source]] movement, or through the use of [[evolutionary algorithms]].

Memetics offers maximum explanatory value in cases where one cannot demonstrate the truth of the contents of the meme.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} For example, one can readily show that washing hands helps to prevent illness, so the best explanation for the widespread popularity of this practice is that "it works", though memetics still helps explain the rate of spread, and details such as why the practice of washing hands before [[surgery]] took so long to catch on. Memetics, however, excels in explaining the spread of certain value-judgements ("[[chastity]] is important"), preferences ("[[pork]] is repulsive"), [[superstition]]s ("black cats bring bad [[luck]]") and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs ("'X' is the one true [[God]]"); since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena by conventional scientific methods. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a "meme", therefore, does not constitute an [[insult]], but dismissing it as "just a meme" does. Calling a belief a meme does not constitute an insult in that most people who believe in memes regard all beliefs as memes anyway.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} For example, an atheist who classified a given theist belief-system as a meme would likely also classify his own atheist belief-system as a meme.{{or}}

=== Memetic methodology ===
Memetics often takes concepts from the theory of evolution (especially [[population genetics]]) and applies them to human [[culture]]. Memetics also uses [[mathematical model]]s to try to explain many very controversial subjects such as [[religion]] and [[political system]]s. Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in the fields (such as [[sociology]], [[cognitive psychology]], [[social psychology]], etc.) most relevant to the claims and methodologies of memetics.

Memeticists generate much memetic terminology by prepending 'mem(e)-' to an existing, usually biological, term or by putting 'mem(e)' in place of 'gen(e)' in various terms. Examples include: [[meme pool]], [[memotype]], [[memetic engineer]], [[meme-complex]].

=== Some concepts of memetics ===
The term ''memetic association'' refers to the idea that memes [[herding behavior|herd]]. For example, a meme for [[blue jeans]] includes memes for [[trouser]]-flies, riveted [[clothing]], blue [[dye]], [[cotton]] clothing, [[belt (clothing)|belt]]-loops and double-sewn [[seam]]s. In this way, groups of memes can operate [[symbiosis|symbiotically]] (to use a biological analogy) in the sense that they act for their mutual benefit/survival.{{Fact|date=August 2007}}

The phrase ''memetic drift'' (formed by analogy to [[genetic drift]]) refers to the process of a meme changing as it replicates between one person to another. Memetic drift increases when meme transmission occurs with variations. Very few memes show strong ''memetic [[inertia]]'' (the characteristic of a meme to manifest in the same way and to have the same impact regardless of who receives or transmits the meme). Memetic inertia increases when the meme transfers along with [[mnemonic device]]s, such as a [[rhyme]], to preserve the memory of the meme prior to its transmission.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} See [[Telephone (game)]] for one example of memetic drift.{{or}}

=== Doubts about memetics ===
A basic difficulty in the study of memes involves the frequent lack of clarity as to what divides one meme from another. Whether this matters may remain a matter of taste.{{or}}

In much the same way that the [[selfish gene]] concept offers a way of understanding and reasoning about aspects of biological evolution, the meme concept can conceivably assist in the better understanding of some otherwise puzzling aspects of human [[culture]] (and learned behaviors of other animals as well).{{or}} However, if one cannot test for "better" empirically, the question will remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a [[philosophy of science|valid]] scientific theory. Memetics thus remains a science in its infancy{{Fact|date=August 2007}}, a [[protoscience]] to proponents, or a [[pseudoscience]] to detractors.

Another objection to the study of the evolution of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves the fact that the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection pressures being neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation rates. There seems no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes.<ref>Kim Sterelney and Paul E. Griffiths, ''Sex and Death: And Introduction to Philosophy of Biology'', Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p.333</ref>

=== Applications of memetics ===
==== Memetic accounts of religion ====

{{POV}}

Memetics regards [[religion]] itself as memetic, and [http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Catalano/quotes.shtml Richard Dawkins] has often discussed religion.

Some [[fundamentalist]] [[evangelism|evangelical]] religious movements act predominantly to swell the reach of their faith-meme.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} These movements devote a large amount of time to evangelical activity.

Many of the world's most successful religions demonstrate memetic modification over time — the theologies of the 21st century differ to a greater or lesser extent from the theologies of previous centuries.<ref>
See [[History of theology]] for accounts of the varying emphases and interests of theologians in various traditions over time.
</ref>
[[Judaism]], [[Christianity]], [[Islam]] and [[Mormonism]] (and their descendants) have all developed through variation, modification and memetic recombination from a shared [[monotheism|monotheistic]] meme: [[Zoroastrianism]] appears to have functioned as an important and widely-shared religious ancestor (see Lawrence Mills, ''Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia'', Chicago, 1913), contributing through Judaism to Christianity, Islam and their many derivative religions.<ref> See for example the discussion and quotations in http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/influenc.htm
</ref>

The [[religious right|Religious Right]] in the [[United States of America]] attaches conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism ("meme piggybacking"{{or}}), and fundamentalist Christianity has associated a particular set of politico-social ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have "replicated" very effectively for many centuries.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} For other examples of piggybacking involving religious memes, note the conversion-histories of the [[Kingdom of Hungary|Hungarian]]s and of [[Kievan Rus']]: adoption of Catholicism and Orthodoxy respectively entailed perceived cultural, political and diplomatic benefits and adherence to perceived mainstream civilization.<ref>
Compare for example the discussion in the article [[Christianization of Kievan Rus']].
</ref>

In [[Western world|Western countries]], [[universities]] evolved from medieval religious institutions devoted to learning. Of the nine [[colonial colleges]] in the British colonies of [[North America]], eight had affiliations with religious institutions. Many US colleges separated themselves from their seminaries, because the [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution]] prevents federal funding of religious organizations. One can think of American academia as an offshoot religion that eliminated less adaptive memes (beliefs in the supernatural) in response to a selective pressure (funding restrictions).{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

A tendency exists in memetics to disparage religious memes{{Fact|date=February 2007}}, beginning at least as early as Dawkins's openly-expressed atheism. Dawkins in ''[[The God Delusion]]'' (2006) calls all religious memes "mind viruses". Author [[Neal Stephenson]] speculates that traditional religions act as mental [[immune system]]s to suppress new (and potentially harmful) memes.<ref>Neal Stephenson: ''Snow Crash''.Bantam Books 1992. ISBN 0-553-08853-X</ref> Some compare this process to a [[scenario]] where the action of a virus (here a religion or a "bundle" of religious memes) proves ineffective and maladaptive if it kills its host(s), or to where the presence of less-harmful bacteria on the skin prevent infection by more-harmful organisms{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}. For example, popular [[Christianity]] forbids both [[murder]] and [[suicide]], and its precise definitions of [[Christian heresy|heresy]] ensure that properly-educated Christians have difficulty in accepting new religions or new viewpoints which advocate such actions.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

Susan Blackmore has made a [http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/awaken.html case] that the study of [[Zen]] [[meditation]] in itself comprises a process of meme "pruning", i.e., a means to remove experiential clichés that reduce the value of life. This has not exempted [[Zen]] itself from serving as a source of highly mobile memes, such as "the sound of one hand clapping" [[koan]] or exclaiming "[[Mu (negative)|mu]]". <!--> please review this statement[&hellip;]it is not clear at all<-->

[[Daniel Dennett]] used the idea of religion as a meme (or as a set of memes) as a basis for much of his analysis of religion in his book ''[[Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon]]''.

Personal and intangible experiences which might seem "above" memes may rather have subconscious roots in memes absorbed during a lifetime, as [[depth psychology]] might suggest.

==== Memetic accounts of science ====

The [[scientific method]] offers a body of social and experimental techniques which, given certain preconditions — a free press for the circulation of information, a large number of people prepared to see the universe as a mechanism subject to general regularities which humans can observe, describe and model through repeatable experiments and/or observations — acts highly virulently, spreading quickly through an educated population as journals circulate and blogs proliferate. By demonstrating its success at making predictions, science as a practice can make itself more attractive to potential converts.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} Whether or not experimenters can necessarily verify them, ideas and attitudes — those which scientists tend to hold or those which feel aesthetically pleasing in combination with scientific discoveries — can propagate themselves in societies where science has a high status by the process of meme piggybacking.{{or}}

Furthermore, one can view the [[scientific method]] as a successful meta-memetical means of selecting those memeplexes best suited for explaining observable physical processes, through its mechanism (parallel to the [[evolutionary algorithm]] used in computer science) of providing standardized methods for creating and evaluating competing populations of solutions to a given problem.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

==== Memetic explanations of racism ====
{{Refimprove|date=September 2007}}

When regarded as non-conscious replicators (much like viruses), individual memes generally lack moral goodness or badness.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} However, the behaviors that memes generate in individuals and groups can have moral implications. History furnishes many examples of the moral implications of racist/ethnic/class memes when they interact with politics, such as the [[Rwandan Genocide]] of 1994.{{or}} [[Racism]] provides an example of a common meme: an ideology that has come to separate people, causing the deaths of some targets or practitioners (the latter due to backlash) and threatening the [[personal life| lives]] of those who do not conform with racist norms.{{or}} Once introduced into a culture, memes evolve (note [[antisemitism]] as a form of [[xenophobia]]) and spread through society, sometimes becoming both harmful and attractive so that they spread like a [[virus]].(Ref.: 1994 G. Burchett{{Fact|date=August 2007}})

In ''[http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/cs.htm Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology]'',<ref>
J M Balkin: ''Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology'' New Haven : Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 0300072880
</ref>
[[Jack Balkin]] argued that memetic processes can explain many of the most familiar features of [[ideology|ideological]] thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form [[narrative]]s, networks of cultural associations, metaphoric and [[metonymy| metonymic]] models, and a variety of different mental structures. Some of these structures can help generate racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, by making this kind of belief spread fast and wide.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Conversely, some memes can have moral implications that most observers might deem positive, such as the meme of anti-racism, which tends/aims to generate behaviors of [[tolerance]].{{or}}

==== Memetic accounts of personality ====

Memeticists often define an individual's [[mind]] as a "playground for memes" or as an "ecology of memes", where the different memes that have colonized that mind at different times interact with each other. For example, when a mind successfully infected by the memeplex for religion X becomes exposed to the memeplex for religion Y, memeplex X may repulse memeplex Y: X can block Y from infecting the mind (for instance through use of such memetic components as the meme that "all other religions apart from X are [[evil]]").{{or}}

In a person’s history, [[language]] provides the first and most important memetic infection.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Indeed, memeticians generally regard language as a memetically-evolved phenomenon. For example, even at the level of animals, many species have evolved particular cries to convey different meanings, such as "danger", "hungry", "aroused", "go away" or "come here". Experiments can verify the memetic nature of the cries of these species, showing for example that the cries do not arise when humans raise the animals concerned: they do not generate the cries by instinct, but learn them from other animals. Human language, as a memetically-evolved [[tool]], can serve not only to communicate concepts between humans, but also to combine low-[[abstraction]] concepts into higher-abstraction ones. This combination/abstraction process, seen memetically, constitutes ''creative breeding'' of memes, where the interaction of several memes results in the birth of a new, combined meme. For example, the mind of Richard Dawkins saw the creative breeding of its memes for "replicator", "culture", and "mind", and this breeding gave birth to the new meme of "meme".{{or}}

After humans become infected with the memeplex for language — generally during babyhood — they get infected with a series of higher-abstraction memes, and especially values-memes.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Depending on the [[education]] received by the person, the lessons drawn from [[experience]], and the surrounding cultural materials (tales, songs, books, etc), a certain ecology and history of meme-infection and interaction builds up within that person’s mind. Memes generate behaviors in their host — either spoken or acted behaviors. Because each person has an individual memetic infection and interaction history, there emerge singular behavior patterns. We conventionally refer to what memeticists regard as meme-generated patterns of behavior as a person's [[Wiktionary:personality|personality]].{{or}}

==== Memetic engineering ====
{{main|Memetic engineering}}

Memetic engineering consists of the process of developing memes, through [[meme-splicing]] and memetic [[synthesis]], with the intent of altering the behavior of others. It consists of the process of creating and developing theories or [[ideology|ideologies]] based on an analytical study of [[society|societies]], their ways of thinking and the evolution of the minds that comprise them. Attempts at [[Artificial Meme-Phrase Creation]] have not met with noted success, though apocryphal stories tell of the putative origins of these sorts of memes.<ref>
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/quiz?view=uk
</ref>

Sometimes people modify and fabricate memes consciously, even intentionally (think the self-image of [[advertising agency| advertising agencies]], for example — though some argue that the intention comes from the memes).{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} This would help to explain how rapidly, extensively and usefully memetic evolution has functioned in and for culture.{{or}} People apply many ever-evolving meme-based systems of [[analysis]] and [[error-correction]] to all information flowing in and out.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Just as genetic material has developed gene-based error-correction models, memetic systems have "found" it advantageous to associate with meme-based error-correction models.{{Fact|date=August 2007}}

However, attempting to popularize a fabricated meme or an unproven theory often results in a backlash against said meme: the originators of a meme may appear to have a hidden agenda, as in the case of [[intelligent design]].<ref>See for example Mooney, Criss. ''The Republican War on Science''. NY: Basic Books, 2005.</ref> Meme-intense societies may generally deride — then forget — such fabricated memes or theories.{{or}}

== Memetic evolution ==

Evolution requires not only [[inheritance]] and natural selection but also variation, and memes also exhibit this property. Ideas may undergo changes in transmission which accumulate over time. Generations of hosts pass on these changes in the [[phenotype]] (the information in brains or in retention systems).{{Fact|date=August 2007}} In other words, unlike genetic evolution, memetic evolution can show both [[Charles Darwin|Darwinian]] and [[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck|Lamarckian]] traits. For example, [[folk tale]]s and [[Mythology|myth]]s often become embellished in the retelling to make them more memorable or more appropriate and therefore more impressed listeners have a greater likelihood of retelling them, complete with accumulating embellishments that may serve to modify human behavior.{{or}} More modern examples appear in the various [[urban legend]]s and [[hoax]]es — such as the [[Goodtimes virus]] warning — that circulate on the Internet.

Dawkins observed that [[culture]]s can evolve in much the same way that [[population]]s of [[organism]]s evolve. Various ideas pass from one [[generation]] to the next; such ideas may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. This process can affect which of those ideas will survive for passing on to future generations. For example, a certain culture may have unique designs and methods of [[tool]]-making that another culture may not have; therefore, the culture with the more effective methods may prosper more than the other culture, ''[[ceteris paribus]]''. This leads to a higher proportion of the overall population adopting the more effective methods as time passes. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological [[gene]] in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. Similarly, like the biological evolutionary process, cultures can retain memes that once served a purpose during one epoch or era as vestigial memes — note the survival of [[astrology]]. Such [[evolutionary misdirection]] resembles (debatably) the survival of the [[vermiform appendix]], or of [[wisdom teeth]] in humans.

=== Propagation of memes ===

Memes have as an important characteristic their [[propagation]] through [[imitation]], a concept introduced by the French [[sociologist]] [[Gabriel Tarde]].{{ref}} Imitation involves copying the [[observation|observed]] behaviour of another individual. Typically imitators copy behaviour from observing other humans, but they may also copy from an inanimate source, such as from a book or from a [[musical score]]. Imitation may depend on brains sufficiently powerful to assess the key aspects of the imitated behavior (what to copy and why) as well as its potential benefits.{{Fact|date=August 2007}}

Researchers have observed memetic copying in just a few species on [[Earth]], including [[Hominidae|hominid]]s, [[dolphin]]s<ref>
"Vocal learning in whistle production has been demonstrated in bottlenose dolphins ..." [http://www.dolphincommunicationproject.org/DissPDFs/Chapter4.pdf Atlantic Spotted Dolphin vocalizations, chapter Delphinid vocalizations], page 133 — retrieved [[2007-08-29]].
</ref>
and [[bird]]s (which learn how to [[singing|sing]] by imitating their [[parent]]s<ref>
Compare for example Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye (1988): "Vocal Development", http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Vocal_Development.html
</ref>
).

When imitation first evolved in the animal [[ancestor]]s of humans, it proved itself a valuable [[skill]] for [[learning]], which increased an individual's ability to reproduce genetically.{{or}} Some have speculated that [[sexual selection]] of the best imitators further drove a genetic increase in the ability of brains to imitate well.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

Memetics suggests that memes have the potential for a much more lasting effect than genes: humans continue to quote prophets, popes and teachers who had no known lineal blood-descendants. Most organisms pass their genes on to their offspring sexually, but with every generation the genetic contribution of a given ancestor halves — so that a person only has a quarter of their grandfather's personal genes. [[Susan Blackmore]] has evaluated the legacy of [[Socrates]]. Since the 5th century BC, Socrates' genes have become thoroughly diluted (dispersed); however, his memes still have a profound effect on modern thought and on contemporary [[philosophy|philosophical]] discourse.{{Verify source|date=August 2007}}

In [[as of 2007|modern times]], the advent of the Internet — and more specifically of email — has provided memes with a high-fidelity propagation medium that enables highly prolific memes to propagate quickly. For example, chain emails furnish a significant instance: in-depth studies have examined their evolution and mutation based on their differential survival rate.{{or}} Paper-based chain letters, predecessors to this meme-distribution net, have also attracted study,<ref>"Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories", Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma. ''Scientific American'', June 2003.</ref> but they have a lower propagation-rate due to the higher copying effort, and a higher mutation-rate may have occurred due to manual transcription or degraded photocopying, thus potentially reducing their lifespan. It seems plausible that the first email chain letters started when recipients transcribed paper-based chain-letters to email{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}, suggesting that memes can move from one propagation medium to another (more efficient) one.{{or}}

=== Evolutionary influences on memes ===

If one accepts the memetic description, it still remains to single out which memes have good potential for spreading. One can make an analogy with biology.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} To be able to say something about the spread of a gene in birds that affect their wings ornithologists need to know about both population genetics and aerodynamics. Similarly, memeticists need to complement the description of memes with a description of what makes a meme easily absorbable by people other than the original carrier.

Only the number of extant copies (and where those copies reside) determine the measurable success of a gene or of a meme. A strong (but not complete) correlation exists between genes that do well and genes that have a positive effect on the organism which contains those genes. And if we can restrict [[attention]] to memes normally interpreted as statements of [[fact]], then a correlation emerges between those memes that do well and those that reflect [[reality]].{{Fact|date=August 2007}} However, some genes and memes do survive which owe their success to other factors. Similarly, a correlation exists between successful memes of a [[technology|technological]]/[[economics|economic]] nature and those that help the [[World economy|economy]] (such as [[slavery]] and [[free markets]] (each in their day), for instance).

A gene's success in a body may stem from its attempt to bypass the normal sexual lottery by making itself present in more than 50% of [[zygote]]s in an organism.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Some genes find other ways of having themselves transmitted between [[cell (biology)|cell]]s. Hence multiple factors influence the evolution of genes — not just the success of the species as a whole. Similarly the evolutionary pressures on memes include much more than just [[truth]] and economic success. Evolutionary pressures may include the following:
# ''Experience'': If a meme does not correlate with an individual's [[experience]], then that individual has a reduced likelihood of remembering that meme.
# ''Pleasure/Pain'': If a meme results in more pleasure or less pain for its host then the host will have a greater likelihood of remembering it.
# ''Fear/Bribery'': If a meme constitutes a threat then people may become [[fear|frightened]] into believing it. Similarly, if a meme promises some future benefit then people may incline to believe it. The memes "if you do X you will burn in hell" and "do Y and you will go to heaven" provide examples. Memes which pass on the fear of a threat, of the likelihood or effectiveness of a threat, that "something will happen if you do such and such a thing", have a high likelihood of success, and may therefore replicate and remain in the meme-pool. They may assist in this way in the survival of a thought, a theme or a philosophy within a [[community]].
# ''Censorship'': If an [[organisation]] destroys any retention-systems containing a particular meme or otherwise controls the usage of that meme, then that meme may suffer a selective disadvantage.
# ''Economics'': If people or organisations with economic influence exhibit a particular meme, then the meme has a greater likelihood of benefiting from a greater audience. If a meme tends to increase the riches of an individual holding it, then that meme may spread because of imitation. Such memes might include "Hard work is good" and "Put number one first".
# ''Distinction'': If the meme enables hearers to recognize and respect tellers (as [[leadership|leader]]s, intelligent people, insightful, etc.), then the meme has a greater chance of spreading. The erstwhile receivers will want to become themselves tellers of the same meme (or of an evolved/mutated version). Thus élite knowledge can provide a promotion to élite status.

Memes, like genes, do not purposely do or want anything — they either get replicated or not. Some meme systems have negative effects on the host or on their host society ([[revenge]] killings, for example), but humans generally have a symbiotic relationship with these abstract entities.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

Memes do not mutate in an exclusively passive way. The brain inhabited by a meme system can carry out a sort of active modification of a meme. One could draw an analogy with a cell's error-correction systems, but they clearly function quite differently.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} People create and modify memes almost continuously.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} One can modify, manipulate, and create meme systems in thought, for instance through internal dialogue.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} As soon as one opens one's mouth and says something (or does something) that one has not copied (but that others can copy), one has unleashed a novel meme.{{or}} Thus, one could conclude{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} that we all perform the role of a memetic engineer to some degree (even if not consciously).{{Fact|date=August 2007}}

This seems especially evident in modern society{{or}}, more notably in the scientific and philosophical realms and in the [[entertainment industry]].{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} It has become standard practice for scientists and philosophers alike to assemble memetic systems and to question their philosophical and [[empiricism|empirical]] integrity. On perceiving a flaw, one may seek [[theoretical]] ([[mathematical]]/[[thought experiments]]/[[logic]]/[[Scientific method|analysis]]) or [[empirical]] ([[experiment]]al/[[observation]]al) resolution. This happens in large part due to the influence of some of the more "modern" philosophers of the past. Over the last few hundred (or thousand) years, a "philosophy" or [[paradigm]] has evolved and developed which benefits the societies in which many embrace it.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} That philosophy includes the [[ethics|ethical]], [[moral]], and scientific obligation to take nothing for granted and always to question any new [[information]] one perceives. People following this tradition have transformed the memetic base of modern science and philosophy. These people include [[Socrates]], [[Aristotle]], [[Plato]], [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]], [[Isaac Newton|Newton]], [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]], [[Albert Einstein]], [[Karl Marx]], [[Benjamin Franklin]] and [[Karl Popper]].{{Verify source|date=August 2007}} Science accepts nothing as true unless empirical evidence and observation suggests such "truth" strongly and consistently. This entire procedure adheres to a meme-system that has evolved to the point of rejecting almost any absolute truth-claim.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} This meme-system now includes such novel analytical [[paradigm]]s as the [[scientific method]] and [[John Dewey|Dewey]]'s [[decision making|Decision-Making]] model (among many other meme-based systems) to help distinguish useful (or truthful) meme-systems from "bad" ones.

[[Francis Heylighen]] of the [[Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies]] has postulated what he calls "memetic selection criteria". These criteria opened the way to a specialized field of [[applied memetics]] to find out if these selection criteria could stand the test of [[quantitative analysis|quantitative analyses]].

[[Cultural materialism]] holds that the evolutionary pressures of economy and [[ecology]] explain many aspects of human culture.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} For example, the [[taboo food and drink|food taboos]] sometimes enshrined in religions - like the concepts of [[sacred cow]]s, [[kosher]] and [[halal]] - would have prospered because they allowed the believing population to (say) live more [[hygiene|hygienically]] and thus survive longer than non-believers in environments possibly more hostile to survival.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} A migration or a change of the economic [[infrastructure]] could render the [[taboo]] neutral or even adverse.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

=== Meme-resistance ===

[[Karl Popper]] advocated memetic caution in the strongest possible terms: "The survival value of [[Intelligence (trait)|intelligence]] is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."{{Fact|date=February 2007}} <!-- If this is a translation, then "extinguish" would be a better word. -->

Resistance to violent and destructive courses of action has formed a common meme that can guide human cultural and [[cognition|cognitive]] evolution away from disastrous paths{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} — for instance the [[United States of America|U.S.]] and [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics|USSR]] stockpiled but did not use [[nuclear weapons]] in the [[Cold War]] period.{{or}} Some cultures can consider [[ignorance]] a virtue — in particular, ignorance of certain temptations that the culture believes would prove disastrous if pursued by many individuals.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

The [[Internet]], perhaps the ultimate meme-[[vector (biology)|vector]] to date{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}, seems to host both sides of this debate{{or}}. Opposition to use of the Internet can stem from any number of memes: from ethics to intent to ability to resist [[hacker|hacking]] or [[pornography]].{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}

The [[Principia Cybernetica]] project maintains a [http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMLEX.html lexicon of memetics concepts], comprising a list of different types of memes. It also refers to an essay by [[Jaron Lanier]], ''[http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_p1.html The ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals]'', which criticises "[[meme totalist]]s" who assert memes over bodies.

=== Memetic virus exchange ===

One controversial application of this "selfish meme" parallel results in the idea that certain collections of memes can act as "memetic viruses": collections of ideas that behave in the manner of independent [[life form|life-form]]s which continue to get passed on — even at the expense of their hosts — simply because of their success at getting passed on.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} Some observers have suggested that [[evangelism|evangelical]] [[religion]]s and [[cult]]s behave in this way; so by including the act of passing on their [[belief]]s as a moral [[virtue]], other beliefs of the religion also get passed along — even if they do not provide particular direct benefits to the believer.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas.{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}} For example, some religions urge [[peace]] and [[cooperation|co-operation]] among their followers ("Thou shalt not murder") which may possibly tend to promote the biological survival of the social groups that carry these memes. However, the idea of group selection stands on shaky ground (to say the least) in the field of genetics. Accordingly, some consider the idea of selection of ideas beneficial to the group exclusively as unlikely.{{or}}<!-- Certainly religious promoters claim such value for following their rules or principles — but how does that relate to what they regard as divine? --> {{Fact|date=February 2007}}

Dawkins notes that one can distinguish a biological virus from its host's normal genetic material by the fact that it can propagate alone, without the propagation of the entire genetic corpus of the host — or half of it, in the case of [[diploid]] [[sexual reproduction]]; thus, a virus can "sabotage" the host's other genes. This applies to memes in the sense that a meme that requires the success of its hosts has a greater likelihood of favouring the interests of these hosts than does a meme capable of succeeding even if each host quickly dies.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} For example, the commonplace meme which encourages people to wash their hands after they use the toilet or before handling food, and which reminds others to do the same, does not appear harmful. In contrast, a meme telling people to quit their jobs, abandon their families, and run around spreading the meme seems quite [[virulence|virulent]].{{Views needing attribution|date=August 2007}}{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

=== Reproductive isolation in meme "speciation" ===

In traditional [[population genetics]] the normal [[genetic variation]], [[Natural selection#Types of selection|genetic selection]], and [[genetic drift]] do not lead to the formation of a new species without some form of "reproductive isolation". Thus in order to split a single [[species]] into two species, the two subpopulations of the original species must ultimately lose their ability to interbreed, which would normally maintain their [[heterogeneity]]. However, once separated, natural selection and/or mere [[genetic drift]] acting on the normal genetic variation in the two subspecies will eventually change enough characteristics of the two subgroups to preclude them interbreeding, which (by a common definition of what constitutes a species) means that they will comprise two different species. {{Fact|date=February 2007}} Examples of reproductive isolation include geographical isolation, where a [[catastrophism|suddenly-appearing]] mountain range or river separates two subgroups; temporal isolation (isolation by time), where one subgroup becomes entirely [[diurnal animal|diurnal]] in its habits while the other becomes entirely [[nocturnal]]; or even just "behavioral" isolation, as seen in [[wolf|wolves]] and [[dog|domestic dogs]]: they ''could'' interbreed, biologically speaking, but normally they do not.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

A similar phenomenon can occur with memes.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Normally, the population of individuals having a meme in their [[consciousness]] contains sufficient internal variation and mixes enough to keep a given meme relatively intact (although it covers a wide range of variations).{{Verify source|date=August 2007}} Should that population become split, however, without sufficient contact for the two different subgroups of variations of the meme to [[Genetic equilibrium|equilibrate]], eventually each group will evolve its own version of that meme, each version differing sufficiently from that of the other group to appear as a distinct entity.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

The ''Kellerman'' meme provides an example of this occurring on the Internet.{{or}} A search of the web and/or Usenet for the word 'Kellerman' will turn up many citations, describing at great length the behavior of a "Dr. Arthur Kellerman", who, with the willing assistance of the [[Centers for Disease Control]] and the [[public health|public-health]] [[lobbying|lobby]], purportedly fabricated studies in order to implicate [[firearm]]s (and by extension their owners) as a menace to [[public safety]], for the purposes of [[statism|statist]] control of the population. The authors of these pages and postings describe purported machinations, "[[junk science]]", a subsequent recantation by Dr. "Kellerman", and the use of his work by proponents of [[gun control]].{{Fact|date=February 2007}}<!--USENET is not a reliable source for facts, but it can provide examples of memes and memetic process galore-->. Compare the work of the differently spelled scientist [[Arthur Kellermann]].

The original meme of Kellermann and his work on gun-related violent [[injury]] has generated a new meme ("Dr. Kellerman is an evil lying gun-grabbing enemy of [[Freedom (political)|freedom]]") by the classic genetic phenomenon of a [[mutagenesis|deletion mutation]].{{Fact|date=August 2007}} The sub-population involved had strongly negative attitudes towards Kellermann's work as well as a lack of firsthand familiarity with his studies and [[career]].{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Because of the "reproductive isolation" caused by the total non-intersection of the results of searches for "Kellerman" and "Kellermann", the Kellerman-meme drifted even further in the direction of negativity, unchecked by facts related to the real Kellermann.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} As this group encounters new individuals of similar general outlook, they introduce new recruits to the "Kellerman" lore only, and go on to produce their own websites and postings furthering the rapid progress of this meme.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

(This phenomenon also demonstrates two other features of memes — the "meme-complex" (memeplex) as a set of mutually-assisting "co-memes" which have co-evolved a symbiotic relationship, and the [http://www.istop.com/~ggrant/memetics/memelex.html "Villain vs. Victim"] infection strategy.)

== Criticism of memetics ==
=== Lack of philosophical appeal ===

One might regard the reduction of the highly complex nature of ideas (such as religion, politics, war, justice, and science itself) to a one-dimensional series of memes as an [[abstraction]] and, as such, a process which does not increase one’s understanding. The highly interconnected, multi-layering of such ideas resists memetic simplification to an atomic or molecular form; as does the fact that each of our [[personal life|lives]] remains fully enmeshed and involved in such "memes". One cannot view memes through a microscope in the way one can detect genes. The levelling-off of all such interesting "memes" down to some neutralized molecular "substance" such as "meme-substance" would introduce a bias toward scientism and abandon the very thing that makes ideas interesting, richly available, and worth studying.<ref>Dieter Lohmar - "Truth", in Lester Embree, ''Encyclopedia of phenomenology'', Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997</ref><ref>Friedrich Nietzsche: ''On the Genealogy of Morals''. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage, 1967.</ref>

To see such an argument for holism as against the kind of atomic reductionism implied by memetics, see [[Willard Van Orman Quine|Quine]]'s "[[Two Dogmas of Empiricism]]"<ref>Quine, W. V. O., 1952, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", in ''From a Logical Point of View'': Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.</ref>

This central problem with the possibility of memes has an illustration in the inability of such a meme-reductionist proposal to afford an explanation of how memetics itself qualifies as a meme, or, further, how one could describe biological genetics as a rather successful meme current in 20th-century science. Either way memes fail. Providing such an explanation would remove the ground from which the idea of memes themselves arose and so empty memes of all meaning. Without such an explanation memes find themselves without reason, limited to cover all but science and memetics itself.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

Another philosophical criticism sees memetics as re-introducing, or re-inforcing, the classic pre-20th-century form of [[Cartesian dualism]], that of mind versus body. Memetics seeks to include in the overall science of evolution such a dualism in the form of meme/gene. This dualism remains tenable{{Fact|date=February 2007}}, but many prominent philosophers have criticised it widely and historians of philosophy often consider it on the wane.{{Facts|date=February 2007}} [[Wittgenstein]], in his critique of Cartesian dualism, ''[[Philosophical Investigations]]'', argued for the absurdity of positing two parallel worlds, one of "body stuff", the other of "mind stuff" whose interaction one does not (and perhaps can not ) know. (See also Wittgenstein's [[private language argument]]).

However, in response to such criticism one might add that memeticists have started to see memes not as atomic but as complex interactors in an environment of other memes and physical entities, a development pre-figured perhaps in the theory of the [[Association of Ideas|association of ideas]] in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries {{Fact|date=February 2007}}. However, such a response would require memetics to prove it had some value to add to such complexity in order to prevent it falling into the same disuse as the theory of [[Association of Ideas|association of ideas]].

Memetics might counter the charge of dualism by noting [[Leibniz]]'s [[monadology]]. This provided a direct response to Cartesian dualism based on an indivisible unit, the monad. Memes resemble monads in that they lack physicality (not having shape, size, mass, charge or energy) and yet as a totality they account for reality. Taken together they form the sum of all experience at any given time. But this argument essentially becomes a [[solipsism|solipsistic]] exercise.

Against the charge of dualism, memeticists might counter that memes in fact supersede genetics, science itself then becoming just another meme that aims, not at the "Truth", as such, but at the useful.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} However, memetics would then have undermined its own truth and the history of its own arrival on the scene, thus becoming yet another [[ontotheology]].

=== Explaining, or re-naming? ===

One important criticism of meme theory hinges on the following question: "If memes are the solution, what is the problem?"

Critics in this vein point to a dearth of useful applications of meme theory in its two decades of existence. Beyond highly general explanations of highly complex phenomena (especially religion), meme theory has yet to produce, according to critics, a solid [[case study|case-study]] of a concrete phenomenon that has gained acceptance among either scientists or social scientists. Rather, they contend, all memetic studies have done is translate conventional social thinking into "meme language" — without adding new explanatory value. {{Fact|date=February 2007}}

This criticism continues by asserting that no reason exists for differentiating or discerning the word "meme" from the word "idea" or from the phrase "pattern of thought". {{Fact|date=February 2007}}

In response to these criticisms, a memeticist might characterize the intitial question as misleading (the word "explanation" or "descriptor" might seem more apt than "solution"). {{Fact|date=February 2007}} The creation of the term "meme" — as opposed to "idea" or "pattern of thought" — allows for specific description and application of the meme as a phenomenon. Additionally, using a new term such as "meme" allows one to avoid semantic baggage associated with well-known terms such as "idea"; and conveys a (mistaken) connotation of novelty.

=== Lack of rigor ===

[[As of 2007| Currently]], genetics has a clear model explaining the storage and transmission of genes.{{Fact|date=September 2007}}
Memetics, by contrast, has no such model for the storage and transmission of memes.{{Fact|date=August 2007}} Memeticists typically assume that memetic "phenotypes" equate with memetic "genotypes" — that every individual believing in one god, for example, carries the same "monotheism meme". This assumption seems like a serious — and to critics, fatal — weakness in memetics relative to its genetic model. {{Fact|date=February 2007}}

In response to these criticisms, memeticists might argue that as their discipline does not construe memes as atomic entities, they therefore parallel indirectly the entirety of existing evolutionary taxonomy. (For example, one would not preclude fish from the animal kingdom for their lack of lungs.) {{Fact|date=February 2007}}

The author [[Evan Louis Sheehan]], on the other hand, does portray memes as particulate (atomic-like) entities, captured in cortical hierarchies identical to what [[Jeff Hawkins]] proposes in his book ''[[On Intelligence]]''. Each hierarchy expresses a pattern that the brain-owner has sensed and remembered. "Sensed patterns" can reflect anything from the shape of a tree to a commonly performed pattern of behavior that routinely propagates through mimicry. A cortical hierarchy consists of a "molecular" entity, constructed from sub-hierarchies, which are themselves ultimately constructed from atomic entities — sensory elements. Sheehan, in his book ''[[The Mocking Memes: A Basis for Automated Intelligence]]'' builds a model of creative thinking around a Darwinian process of combining and recombining various causal memes.

=== The problem of virus-analogies ===

Some critics{{Fact|date=September 2007}} attack proponents of memetics for what the critics see as severely flawed conceptions of one aspect of memetic theory: the intermittently applied analogy with viruses. Neither biological nor computational viruses (according to this line of thought) can serve for analogous purposes because they differ radically from thoughts; thus meme-proponents commit the fallacy of [[false analogy]]. Once a biological virus has infected a cell, or once a digital microprocessor has started to execute a computational virus, the outcome becomes almost completely determined: an observer can attempt to identify that outcome by examining the order of nucleic-acids in the cell-genome or the bit-pattern in the computer-memory. All possible configurations of such viruses have well-defined characteristics and get stored in digital form. — In contrast, the [[brain]] (assumed as a standard though not the sole repository of memes) consists of a massively parallel-executing mesh of [[neuron]]s: scientists [[as of 2007| still]] do not know exactly how it stores and retrieves information. The senses provide continuous, noisy and highly different input (note deafness, blindness, and disorders of perception). Observations of witnesses suggest that similar experiences of different people may result in very varied [[interpretation]]s. Misunderstandings occur. Some concepts appear so abstract or need so much mental capacity that the majority of people cannot understand or "grasp" them. This situation suggests the questions: How can proponents of memes know that a "transfer" of a meme actually occurs in the sense that it remains the same entity? If meme-proponents explain the result of such a transfer as a "new meme" or as an "imperfect copy", what core of the transmitted meme remains unchanged? If nothing remains unchanged, the claim of a transfer seems highly dubious.<ref>http://memetics.chielens.net/master/thesis.pdf</ref>

Memeticists may then argue that various physical aids may ensure the correct transfer of the core of a meme. For instance, a sculpture of a [[cross]] or a physical hardcopy of the [[Qu'ran]] may ensure that humans copy the cores of these memes (the symbolism of the cross and the words of the prophet respectively) with sufficient fidelity.

== General response to criticisms ==

A number of criticisms of memetic theory stem from confusion over what the term "gene" refers to. In [[microbiology]], microbiologists see a "gene" as a [[cistron]], a specific region of [[DNA]]. The analogy between memes and genes, however, relates to an [[Evolutionary biology|evolutionary biologist]]'s gene, an abstract replicatory unit of information. People who think of a gene as an actual visible piece of DNA often criticise the memetic analogy because of this. An example of such an "abstract replicatory unit of information" might code for the color of one's hair or for the length of a digit.{{Fact|date=February 2007}}

== Historical antecedents of the meme concept ==

[[Plato]] used the term ''eidos'' to speak of the immutable and eternal nature of an existing thing. The human mind acted upon this ''eidos'', according to Plato, when reasoning about the world around it. [[Aristotle]] rejected this notion in favor of an abstraction and categorization of the world as perceived by the observer.

Descriptions of meme-like concepts appear in [[Sufi]] teaching. [[Muwakkal]]s rank as separate beings, elementals, that make up human thought (compare [[Gottfried Leibniz|Leibniz's]] [[monad]]s).

During the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] the terms "idea", "perception", and "impression" came into use. The essential meaning of the term "idea", as then used, involved some existent phenomena resulting from perception of a stimulus and cogitation on that stimulus.

[[Charles Darwin]] struggled with the concept in his early notebooks (M and N Notebooks) and never succeeded in adequately addressing the complexities of the human social and cognitive capabilities. While Darwin lacked proof for a biologically-inheritable element, he had postulated one and seemed quite comfortable with the concept of biologically-inherited social traits. (A modern biologist ignorant of the connotations of the term might characterize the latter concept as "[[Social Darwinism]]".) Darwin also wrote of selection of novelty and fashion and quoted [[Max Müller]] on the struggle amongst words and grammatical forms:<ref>Darwin, Charles. ''The Descent of Man'', Chapter III, Mental Powers, pp.90-91.</ref>

{{quotation|words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Müller has well remarked: — "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.|Charles Darwin, ''The Descent of Man'' }}

[[Gabriel Tarde]] (1843 - 1904), a French sociologist, developed ideas of cultural transmission based on imitation and innovation of small psychological interactions. His sociology attempted to classify social phenomena by the generation and propagation of ideas, practices, and habits. Some have seen this work as an appealing historical and theoretical precursor to memetics.

[[Bertrand Russell]] repeated several times the phrase "beliefs are contagious" in his writing about human error.

[[John Laurent]] in ''The Journal of Memetics'' has suggested that the term 'meme' itself may have derived from the work of the little-known [[Germany|German]] biologist [[Richard Semon]]. In 1904 Semon published ''Die Mneme'' (published in English as ''The Mneme'' in 1924). His book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent found the use of the term ''mneme'' in ''The Soul of the White Ant'' (1927) by [[Maurice Maeterlinck]] (who allegedly plagiarised from Eugène N. Marais) and highlights its parallels to Dawkins's concept.

Maeterlinck, in discussing theories which attempt to explain '[[memory]]' in [[termite]]s as well as amongst the other [[social insect]]s ([[ant]]s, [[bee]]s etc.), uses the phrase "engrammata upon the individual mneme" (Maeterlinck, 1927, p.198). Webster's Collegiate dictionary defines an [[Engram (neuropsychology)|engram]] as "a memory trace; specif.: a [[protoplasm]]ic change in [[neural tissue]] hypothesized to account for persistence of memory". Note that Maeterlinck explains that he obtained his phrase from the "[[German philosophy|German philosopher]]" Richard Semon. [http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1999/vol3/laurent_j.html]

Laurent suggests that the [[etymology|etymological]] roots of the term 'meme' may come from ''mimneskesthai'', the Greek [[verb]] for 'to remember, to keep in mind' — rather than from the Dawkins-supplied root of Greek ''mimeisthai'', "to imitate".

The old saying "Ideas have a life of their own" clearly encapsulates the "meme about memes". [[Keith Henson]] has traced this quote back to 1910 where an unknown interviewer of [[G. K. Chesterton]] used it - apparently as an old saying at that time.[http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.quotations/msg/679859a365f8ad0d?hl=en&]

One could conceivably trace this idea back to at least 1831, when [[Victor Hugo]] wrote: "[...] every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating itself [...]" in his book ''Notre Dame de Paris'' (translated into English as ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'') (Book Fifth, Chapter II).

[[John Maynard Keynes]] ended his ''[[The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money]]'' (1935) with the following:

{{quotation|[&hellip;] the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. [&hellip;] I am sure the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas[&hellip;]But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.|John Maynard Keynes<ref>Keynes, John Maynard. ''The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money''. New York: Harbinger. 1965.</ref>}}

[[Everett Rogers]] pioneered the "[[Diffusion of innovations]]" theory (formalised in 1962) which explains how and why people adopt new ideas. Rogers reflected some of the influence of [[Gabriel Tarde]] (1843 - 1904), who set out "laws of imitation" in his book of 1890 that explained how people decided whether to imitate [[behavior]].

The [[concept]] that ideas spread according to genetic rules predates the coining by Richard Dawkins in ''The Selfish Gene''; for example [[William S. Burroughs]] asserted that "language is a virus".

In his book ''[[Chance and Necessity]]'',<ref>
{{cite book
| last= Monod| first= Jacques| authorlink= Jacques Monod
| title= [[Chance and Necessity|Zufall und Notwendigkeit. Philosophische Fragen der modernen Biologie]]
| publisher=Piper| date=1971| location=München
| pages=202-204| url=| doi=| id=| isbn= 3-492-22290-0}}
</ref>
[[Jacques Monod]] wrote a two-page section about the selection and evolution of ideas:

{{quotation|For a biologist it is tempting to compare the evolution of ideas with the evolution of living nature. [&hellip;] ideas have kept some of the properties of organisms. Like them they want to propagate and multiply their structure, like them they can mix, recombine and reseparate their content, like them they have an evolution, and in this evolution, selection undoubtedly plays a big role. (Translated from German: Für einen Biologen ist es verlockend, die Evolution der Ideen mit der Evolution der belebten Natur zu vergleichen. [&hellip;] Ideen [haben] einige der Eigenschaften von Organismen [&hellip;] . Wie diese wollen sie ihre Struktur fortpflanzen und vermehren, wie diese können sie ihren Inhalt vermischen, rekombinieren und wieder abtrennen, wie diese haben sie schliesslich eine Evolution, und in dieser Evolution spielt die Selektion ohne jeden Zweifel eine große Rolle.)
}}
Monod continues discussing the fecundity and impact of ideas and some factors that influence them, using religious ideas as an example.

Anthropological [[cultural materialism]] advanced the view that the evolutionary pressures of economy and [[ecology]] explain many aspects of human culture. According to this theory, the [[taboo food and drink|food taboos]] sometimes enshrined in religions - like the concepts of [[sacred cow]]s, [[kosher]] and [[halal]] - prospered because they allowed the believing population to (say) live more [[hygiene|hygienically]] and thus survive longer than non-believers in environments possibly hostile to survival. A migration or a change of the economic [[infrastructure]] could render the [[taboo]] neutral or even adverse.

== Examples of memes ==

Crudely-stated versions of some common memes include:

* [[Technology]] and technological artifacts: cars, paper-clips, etc. Technology clearly demonstrates mutation as well as transmission, which memetic (or genetic) progress requires. Many paper-clip designs have emerged in the last century, for example, with varying degrees of longevity, fecundity and copying fidelity (i.e., memetic "success"). An often-cited example of "technology as meme" involves the building of a fire.
* [[Jingle]]s: [[advertising]] [[slogan]]s set to an engaging [[melody]]
* [[Earworm]]s: songs that one can't stop humming or thinking about.
* [[Joke]]s
* [[Proverb]]s and [[aphorism]]s: for example: "You can't keep a good man down".
* Snippets of [[gossip]].
* [[Nursery rhyme]]s: propagated from parent to child over many generations (thus keeping otherwise obsolete words such as "[[tuffet]]" and "chamber" in use), sometimes with associated actions and movements.
* Children's culture: games, activities and chants (such as taunts) typical for different age-groups.
* [[Epic poem]]s: once important memes for preserving oral history; writing has largely superseded their oral transmission.
* [[Conspiracy theories]]
* [[Factoid]]s
* [[Fashion]]s
* Medical and safety advice: "Don't swim for an hour after eating" or "Steer in the direction of a skid".
* The material of video technology: very memetic given its mass replication — people tend to imitate scenes or repeat popular [[catch phrase]]s such as "You can't handle the truth!" from ''[[A Few Good Men]]'', "Alllllllrighty then!" from ''[[Ace Ventura]]'' or "I'm going to make you an offer you cannot refuse" from ''[[The Godfather]]'', even if they have not personally seen a film or a television-broadcast themselves.
* [[Religion]]s: complex memes, including [[folk religion|folk religious]] beliefs, such as [[The Prayer of Jabez]].
* Popular concepts: these include [[Freedom (political)|Freedom]], [[Justice]], [[Ownership]], [[Open Source]], [[Egoism]], or [[Altruism]]
* Group-based biases: everything from [[anti-semitism]] and [[racism]] to [[cargo cult]]s.
* Longstanding political memes such as "[[mob rule]]", [[national identity]], ''[[Yes Minister]]'' and "republic, not a democracy".
* [[Programming paradigms]]: from [[structured programming]] and [[object-oriented programming]] to [[extreme programming]].
* [[Internet phenomenon|Internet phenomena]]: [[Internet slang]]. "[[Internet memes]]" propagate quickly among users using email, websites, blogs, discussion boards and other Internet communications as a medium.
* [[Moore's Law]]: this meme has a particularly interesting form of self-replication. The conviction that "semiconductor complexity doubles every 18 months" became considerably more than a predictive observation; it became a performance-target for an entire industry once that industry extensively started to believe in the "law". Manufacturers now strive to make the next generation of semiconductor technology re-create the growth in performance of the previous generation, and so maintain belief in Moore's Law. Additionally, the evolution of this meme provides details of interest. The original law described growth in terms of the number of transistors on a chip, but people - more and more -- have (wrongly) understood it as describing an increase in terms of performance. This could exemplify how a meme can mutate slowly under the pressure of its environment (partial technical understanding and simplification for use in the mainstream media).
* [[Consciousness]] and the [[self-concept|self]]: [[Susan Blackmore]] theorized that a "self" merely comprises a collection of memetic stories which she calls the ''selfplex''.
* [[Metameme]]: The concept of memes itself comprises a meme.
* [[Anecdote]]s: Short jokes or other stories.
* [[Phrase]]s; A turn of phrase, or expression, like "Whasssssup!" or "Where's the beef?" or the Internet meme "[[all your base are belong to us]]!"
* [[Viral marketing]]: A type of [[marketing]] based on memes and using "[[word of mouth]]" to advertise (see the [[as of 2007|recent]] example of ''[[Snakes on a Plane]]'').

The ''Memetic Lexicon'' lists meme-attributes compiled by Glenn Grant under a "share-alike" licence. The examples it offers may help to focus the concept. The Lexicon has circulated since the early 1990s, and evolved into its version 3.5 of its memeplex (Memelex) in 2004: [http://www.istop.com/~ggrant/memetics/memelex.html A Memetic Lexicon]. One should keep in mind that Glenn Grant has the background of a writer of fiction rather that of an authority on memetics: many of the terms in the lexicon he simply invented as an experiment in the spread of his own self-generated memes. [http://www.istop.com/~ggrant/memes.html]

== See also ==
== See also ==
<!-- Please keep this list alphabeticised. Thanks! -->
<!-- Please keep this list alphabeticised. Thanks! -->

Revision as of 19:59, 25 September 2007

SO I HERD U LIEK MEMES

See also

References

Literature

  1. Henson, H. Keith: Memes Meta-Memes and Politics, 1988
  2. Henson, H. Keith and Arel Lucas: "Memes, Evolution, and Creationism", 1989
  3. Khan, Pir Hazrat Inayat: The Music of Life, Omega Uniform Edition, 2nd edition, 1993, trade paperback: 353 pages, ISBN 0-930872-38-X. An introduction to the muwakkals (Eastern memes).
  4. Dennett, Daniel: Consciousness Explained, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1991. ISBN 0316180653
  5. Dennett, Daniel: Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, 1995
  6. Brodie, Richard: Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme. Integral Press, September 1995, 251 pages, ISBN 0-9636001-1-7
  7. Bloom, Howard: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History. Atlantic Monthly Press, February 1997, 480 pages, ISBN 0-87113-664-3
  8. Blackmore, Susan: The Meme Machine. Oxford University Press, 1999, hardcover ISBN 0-19-850365-2, trade paperback ISBN 0-9658817-8-4, May 2000, ISBN 0-19-286212-X
  9. Fog, Agner: Cultural Selection. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1999. ISBN 0-7923-5579-2.
  10. Lynch, Aaron: Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society. Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-08467-2
    1. Review: "The new pseudo-science of memes"
  11. Stephenson, Neal: Snow Crash. Bantam Doubleday Dell, reprint, 2000, trade paperback: 440 pages, ISBN 0-553-38095-8 (science-fiction novel about a metavirus engineered to activate as a meme in the brain, spreading through a number of vectors such as actual physical viruses, images, and others)
  12. Flannery, Tim: "Eyes at the back of your head: How Richard Semon's memes gave way to Richard Dawkins's memes". Times Literary Supplement, October 19, 2001
  13. Aunger, Robert: The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. Free Press, 2002, hardcover ISBN 0-7432-0150-7
  14. Aunger, Robert: Darwinizing culture: the status of memetics as a science. Oxford University Press, 2000, New-York ISBN 0-19-263244-2
  15. Henson, H. Keith: "Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects", The Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 343-355 [1]
  16. H. Keith Henson: "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War."
  17. Lanier, Jaron: "The Ideology of Cybernetic Totalist Intellectuals", an essay which criticises "meme totalists" who assert memes over bodies.
  18. "Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission" Journal of Memetics
  19. Principia Cybernetica holds a lexicon of memetics concepts, comprising a list of different types of memes.
  20. A list of memetics publications on the web
  21. Ericsson-Zenith, Steven: Memeiosis , a formal characterization of memes.
  22. Situngkir, Hokky: Culture as Complex Adaptive System, formal interplays between memetics and cultural analysis.
  23. Chielens, Klaas: The Viral Aspects of Language: A Quantitative Research of Memetic Selection Criteria
  24. Distin, Kate: The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment. Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-60627-6
  25. Hugo, Victor: Notre Dame de Paris (translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame), 1831
  26. Dennett, Daniel: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon , 2006
  27. Gibson, William: Pattern Recognition, page 95, "Word-of-mouth meme thing. We don't really know what it does, yet.", 2003.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meme&oldid=160316688"