----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan B. Marder <jonathan.marder@newmail.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 8:21 PM
Subject: MD Genes, Memes, Darwin and Lemarck
Welcome Jonathan,
You wrote,
> Thus, I conclude that there may be a need for memetics. However, there
> is a problem with how to carve behaviour into discreet memes. In
> genetics, it has been possible to make some very clear-cut mappings
> between functions and specific sequences of DNA. For memetics, it is
> going to be very hard to do the same thing in any objective manner. That
> is the first challenge.
<< A correspondent of me, Doug Klimesh, USA,
www.provide.net/~dougklim/Memedna.htm
wrote in an article called " Meme Storage in DNA " that Stuart Hameroff,
proposes that the microtubukes making up the cytoskeleton of basically
every living cell in addition to providing the structure and shape of the
cell
and the means of intracellular transport also function as electrical
information
processors. So when a cell devides, it may pass on genetic information
not just in DNA but also in the form of microtubules, which are integral
in cell dividsion mechanics.
I replied,
DNA (genes) may not just pass on their genetic information but also
(in the form of microtubules ? ) our neurological (memetic) evolutionary
driven re- representations of our role in society.
In other words, our neurological representation of being a teacher and/
or our will/ our need to be a teacher or the pressure to become one,
transformed themselves from gained/ acquired ( Lamarck) preferences
to inborn/ inbedded criteria ( Darwin)_ which transposed themsleves into
the proximity of our genetic reproductionpattern.
Our position as an individual in society, the goal which we sanctify for
ourselves or the aims which our parents throw upon us and the natural
representation of this all, is already then due to our genetic reproduction-
pattern undermind or in the other sense fortified.
That is, memes are passed down through genes through the raising and
socialization of our children.
How this is accomplished I do not know, yet, but I think that somehow
memetic info is ( re) combined with DNA along lines of acquired Lamarc-
kian preferences.
E J Steele points out that somehow Weismann 's barrier can be broken
by evoking somatic gene mutations in the form of RNA being copied back
into DNA and integrated in the gene of the chromosomes and so to progency,
(RetroGenes)
My idea is, if memes are blocks of info and they are selfish like genes they
will do everything to propagate themselves.
That is, memes will secure themselves as additional info onto genes and in
that manner they will drive along with the gene to the offspring.
The way to do that may be Darwinian, that is Selection, but the principle
is Lamarckian.
Steele evokes something called " an expression site for the gene " and I
agree_ there is something spatial about how a gene exists, and in that
space-
time continium there has to be the meme((tic) info).
Last night, writing this stuff as an answer to your question I had a
wonderful
thought...
What if the meme is the spatial expression of the gene 's content !?
If this idea is valid, then each gene has to be its own private spatial
expres-
sion site, what we should call the (a) proto- meme, a somatic inprint,
a epigenetic rule, a mental state, a mental pattern.
It would be " planned " , it would be Lamarckian, it would explain why
a child is not a cheat of white paper...there would be no problem with
selection, inheritance and variation, each of us is the endproduct of long
biological selected lines...
Remerber, a child is born with certain " biological " patterns, what if the
biological patterns which make up the very first mental states of a child
are not genetic, but memetic in origin...that info would be encoded in DNA
as
some sort of spatial entity...
What than we call neural patterns of neural connections are those connec-
tions made upon the very first mental " biological " states.
With this I made the challenge more complicated I think, but if we could
find something spatial about the gene we could find an objective way to
test memetics_ a meme would be part of its own gene as an additional,
spatial piece of info...which would reside in the embryo its proto- brain
and later manifest itself as the very basic where upon the human builts
his personality and identity...
Do I make sense...I was carried away by the prospect I stumbled across
something important...
The second challenge will follow soon...
Many regards,
Kenneth
( I am, because we are)
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