A thought I find especially interesting is that the memes and their behaviour could be explained via the theories of biology, such as evolution and survival of the fittest. — BlueBanana
The gene, the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity which prevails on our own planet. There may be others. If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the basis for an evolutionary process.
But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicator and other, consequent, kinds of evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind.
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which 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 meme. It should be pronounced to rhyme with "cream."
A thought I find especially interesting is that the memes and their behaviour could be explained via the theories of biology, such as evolution and survival of the fittest. — BlueBanana
Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more—and for more drastic—modifications of the average person’s worldview than Charles Darwin. — Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought
The problem is the fundamental error in memetics, which is the assumption that humans are the ones to create memes, when it's quite the opposite. — Bluebanana
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