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I think he was right to not focus too much on the "meme" concept he invented, because it is quite different from genes, scientifically (which is what he cares a
by azakai 11y ago
I think he was right to not focus too much on the "meme" concept he invented, because it is quite different from genes, scientifically (which is what he cares about).
1. The crucial thing with genes is that they are "binary", you either get a gene from a parent, or not. Mutations happen, but they produce new genes. Genes are "immortal" (exist for many, many generations in identical form). Memes, on the other hand, are not binary in this way. Ideas constantly change, and we can't reduce them to a binary code.
2. The rules of genetic competition are complex, but we have a good framework: natural selection and sexual selection. However, to explain memetic competition, we need to talk about psychology and sociology and so forth (in addition to biology). There are already fields doing that, from psychology and sociology to literature and religious studies, mostly in a non-scientific way, because we have yet to find a good scientific one.
3. For those reasons, "memetics" never succeeded as an academic discipline. The field has not succeeded in providing useful theories to be tested that tell us quantative things we don't already know.
Of course, at the same time the insights you mention are true. But they are not anywhere near as powerful as the concept of genes. They are mostly useful as an analogy, and to open people's minds, but not scientifically.
- antimonious 11y agoI disagree. The reason why memes are not analogous to genes is that when a meme colonizes your head, you as an individual can use some forward thinking, prefrontal cortex, and change the meme then respread the new mutated meme. This is much closer to, but not identical to, lamarckian style evolution than to darwinian or neodarwinian selfish gene style evolution. One is directed and can avoid evolutionary local minima, the other can not.
- azakai 11y agoAgreed, that's an additional very large difference between genes and memes.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> The crucial thing with genes is that they are "binary", you either get a gene from a parent, or not. Mutations happen, but they produce new genes. Genes are "immortal" (exist for many, many generations in identical form). Memes, on the other hand, are not binary in this way. Ideas constantly change, and we can't reduce them to a binary code. Memes are not ideas, they are behaviors. They are either preserved exactly (like genes) or something modifies them to create a new replicable behavior (again, like genes.) The difference you attempt to paint here is spurious.
- azakai 11y ago> Memes are not ideas, they are behaviors. Why do you say that? Wikipedia's definition disagrees with you, > A meme (/ˈmiːm/ meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture". as does Dawkins himself, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Origins And Genes aren't behaviors either. Behaviors are something that the phenotype might perform due to certain genes, but the behavior is not the gene. Genes are a code. They are abstract, discrete, and immortal. That's why they are so useful in biology. As the Wikipedia article notes, the lack of such a parallel in memes limits their scientific utility.