RS24 - Memetics!
Release date: December 19, 2010
The term meme was introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 bestseller "The Selfish Gene." Dawkins was trying to establish the idea that Darwinian evolution is a universal, almost logically necessary phenomenon. He couldn't, however, point to exobiological examples to reinforce the concept of universal Darwinism, so he turned to cultural evolution, renamed “ideas” as “memes” (in direct analogy with genes), and voilà, the field of memetics was born.
Despite staunch support by authors such as Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett, among others, serious questions can be raised about memes and memetics as a viable concept and field of inquiry. To begin with, how is memetics different from classical studies of gene-culture co-evolution? Second, what exactly are memes, i.e. what is their ontological status? Third, how do memes compete with each other, and for what resources? Is it even possible to build a functional ecology of memes, without which the statement that the most fit memes are those that spread becomes an empty tautology? Could this explain why the "Journal of Memetics" closed shop, or is it that they discovered everything there was to discover about memes?
Comment on the episode teaser.
Julia's pick: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"
Massimo's pick: The New York Times' "The Stone"
4 Comments
Reader Comments (4)
Good episode, although I sometimes feel that Massimo is beating up on Dawkins unfairly. Dawkins is pretty clear that genes cannot be considered is isolation but only in the context of the whole genome. Maybe rather than jumping right into 'memes' and social psychology it would be more productive to try to develop a more basic and generalized theory of self-replicating information based on information theory (too bad Claude Shannon is no longer with us). A sequence of base pairs on a strand of DNA could be considered as a sub-category of information encoding 'technology'. As a computer scientist I have a vested interest in robust theory being developed. My impression is that most biologists have no idea how much in love some of my colleagues and I are with the power and beauty of genetic algorithms. The possibilities at our disposal are mind boggling: Three sexes? No problem. Pick any mutation or crossover rates you want. Haploid, diploid, triploid, n-ploid? Again no problem.
Thank you to Julia and Massimo. I eagerly await every episode
I have to be careful because I am not familiar with Dawkins' ideas on "memetics," so maybe a lot of this discourse had an implied context that would change my opinion. But here it is, anyway. :) The genetics analogy is, I assume, only supposed to act as a familiar vector for the concept of natural selection. As explained, natural selection has three requirements: reproduction, a measure of reproductive fitness, and random changes to fitness across generations. Those three do have their own requirements; e.g., reproduction depends on a definition of form that allows you to identify when the form has been reproduced. However, the "form" of a meme is outside the scope of the genetics analogy. It is wholly irrelevant whether genotypes lead to phenotypes and memes are the opposite, etc. I was disappointed that so much of the discussion was spent improperly extending the analogy.. But with that said, I still enjoyed listening, and I am glad I found these podcasts!
This isn't as serious as you guys like to get but check out this site that covers Internet memes... http://knowyourmeme.com/
"Dawkins is pretty clear that genes cannot be considered is isolation but only in the context of the whole genome."
The problem is, once you accept this, Dawkins no longer has anything to say that is actually original. "Gene selectionism" starts it's journey toward becoming devoid of content, and you may as well just read what everyone else says about evolution, and let "The Selfish Gene" take its rightful place amongst the Gaia hypothesis and other largely dead-end ways of conceptualising the natural world.