ROGER ADDS INPUT TO JONATHAN, KENNETH AND PETER ON A TOTALLY COOL THREAD
JONATHAN WROTE:
As I understand it, memetics is an attempt to define these
behaviour patterns as units of information. Like in genetics, some memes
may be advantageous and thus will be maintained by repeated copying.
Less successful memes tend to die out. Also like genes, memes may
evolve.
As I understand it, many traits (e.g. walking, talking) have both
genetic and memetic elements. I assume that genes and memes for walking
COevolved, i.e. man's ancestor developed the appropriate musculature,
neurology and behaviour together. For language, I expect that most of
the memetic development occurred in just the last few tens of thousand
years against near constant genetic background. However, even in this
case, there may have been significant co-evolution. I assume that the
inability to master language in the modern world is a severe
evolutionary disadvantage, thus human families who lack the genetic
capacity for language tend to die out.
ROGER REPLIES:
Below is a related excerpt from some of my current writings which I hope to
publish on this or another website soon:
"Society's great breakthrough in the past million years or so has been
gaining the ability to evolve. In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
identified that genes are no longer the only evolutionary mechanism. He
identified a second fundamental unit of evolution that had previously been
ignored. This social unit of evolution, which Dawkins called memes, emerged
out of a special talent of advanced primates.
Memes arise due to man's unique ability to imitate. This is an extremely
difficult process that we take for granted, but that is rare in other species
(though it is seen in a very limited form in some birds). Note that
imitating is quite different than learning. Most animals can learn by
observing others. They can learn what to fear or where to eat, but they
cannot learn behavior that is not innate. Humans on the other hand, are
what Susan Blackmore refers to in The Meme Machine as 'consummate imitative
generalists' that can copy behaviors that are completely alien. Indeed, what
seems to be innate in us is our ability to imitate.
Why is imitation so difficult? First, you must decide what to imitate --
what behavior has quality and what details of that behavior are important and
which are irrelevant. Next, you have to transform one point of view into
another -- from what I see her doing, to what I should do. This requires the
concept of the self and of others, with the ability to contrast these views.
In other words, imitation requires subject/object thinking. Finally, you
must be able to coordinate matching bodily actions. The primates that were
to become our ancestors were the first species to be able to accomplish these
three skills.
Memes are defined as any social pattern, behavior or thought that is
imitatable. Examples include songs, tools, techniques, strategies, beliefs,
ideas, religions, roles, principles, styles, morals, and virtually anything
else making up human society.
Like genes, and unlike animal societies, memes are subject to selection,
variation and duplication. Therefore, once we developed the ability to
imitate, memetic evolution became inevitable. The rapid evolution of man and
society over the last million years or so can be explained via the
positive-sum co-evolution of genes and memes. This combination of two self
reinforcing positive-sum feedback loops has resulted in an unprecedented,
explosive advancement in novel and complex patterns. Copyers became more
successful by copying other's successes and outliving and out reproducing
inept copiers. Successful memetic patterns were copied more than others.
Sounds were used to spread memes more efficiently. Vocal cords evolved to
improve the range of sounds. Language developed to better convey flexible
messages. Brains grew to better manipulate and retain memes. Memes for
writing and printing and broadcasting improved our ability to store and
disseminate increasingly complex memes. In fact, the social structure itself
is a meme. Societies could copy and latch onto successful patterns and
discard bad ones. New variations could be tested.
Memes allow social patterns to compete, to evolve and to become significantly
more dynamic than anything in the animal world."
BACK TO JONATHAN:
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.
ROGER:
Of course, as you alluded to in your post, when Darwin first proposed the
idea, we didn't know what the evolutionary unit was either. And is the
biological unit really DNA, or is it patterns of DNA? Or in MOQ terms, is it
in essence just patterns? You also mention the environment's interaction.
Have you read "The Collapse of Chaos" by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart? (A
mathematician and a biologist -- though I forget which is which). They point
to just what you did when they discuss evolution....ie the importance of
context as well as content. I GUARANTEE you will love this book, Jonathan.
It is IMO a "must read" for the application of concepts of the MOQ to
biological concepts (The other great book is Capra's "Web of Life" --
especially the application of the concept of Autopoiesis)
JONATHAN:
The second challenge is something I wrote to Kenneth privately. As a
biologist, I can accept the model of Darwinian evolution of genes.
However, behaviour is often conscious - sometime we can aspire to a new
behaviour and then master it. Does that mean that memetic evolution is
Lamarckian?
ROGER:
I would say it is. That is one reason why social patterns can evolve so much
faster than biological patterns. This creates a clear-cut separation between
the biological and the social metaphors, but as with all metaphors, it is
critical to know when to avoid overextending the analogyt. Have you gone to
the EDGE website that someone??? here was recommending a few months ago?
There are all types of good discussions on these issues by top writers and
scientists (including Dawkins). I can send you some great links if you are
interested.
Rog
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