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Memetics is the scientific approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme.
Richard Dawkins (1989) once coined a basic unit of human evolution, the meme. Dawkins continued Charles Darwins genetic evolution to the human world. He concluded that replication also happens in human evolution, yet in a different sense. In his book, Dawkins contended that meme is a unit of information residing in the brain and is the replicator in human cultural evolution. It resembles characteristics in gene, where it may self-replicate and mutate. It has pattern and can influence its surrounding and propagate. This created great debate among sociologists and biologists and other disciplines scientists. This is because Dawkins himself didn't give sufficient explanation of how replication of unit of information in the brain controls human behavior and, eventually, culture. The broad sense of unit of information came to many definitions by many scientists.
Susan Blackmore (2002) reaffirmed the meme definition as whatever is copied from one person to another person. They could be habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said,
Memes, like genes, are replicators. That is, they are information that is copied with variation and selection. Because only some of the variants survive, memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Memes are copied by imitation, teaching and other methods, and they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called co-adapted meme complexes, or memeplexes. In her definition, thus, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires brain capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since human social learning process is different one another, henceforth, the imitation process cannot be said completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes behind. This is to say that mutation rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, even possible to occur within every interaction on imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see social system where complex network of interaction lies, an orderly emerges in the macro level, culture.
Another definition, given by Hokky Situngkir, tried to offer a more rigorous formalism around meme, memeplexes, and the deme, seeing meme as a cultural unit in cultural complex system. It is based on the Darwinian genetic algorithm with some modification on the different pattern of evolution in gene and meme. In the method of memetics as the way to see culture as complex adaptive system (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003471/), it is clear how we can see memetics incorporating as an alternative methodology of cultural evolution. However, there are a lot of possible definitions labelled to meme. In the sense of computer simulation on applicating memetics on certain purposes, the term of memetic programming is known.
Memetics is simply can be understood as the method to scientific analysis of cultural evolution. However, enthusiasms on memetics as described in the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission (http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/overview.html) reflects this area as an important and promising area on the analysis of culture in the terminologies of evolution.
Open Questions
- How can we measure meme as a cultural unit in cultural evolution?
- How different is biological evolution and the cultural one?
- How is the interplay between the memetic approach to the recent advancement of computer science, including the computational sociology?
See also
References
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press (http://www.oup.co.uk/), 1976, 2nd edition, December 1989, hardcover, 352 pages, ISBN 0192177737; April 1992, ISBN 019857519X; trade paperback, September 1990, 352 pages, ISBN 0192860925
- The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press (http://www.oup.co.uk/), 1999, hardcover ISBN 0198503652, trade paperback ISBN 0965881784, May 2000, ISBN 019286212X
- The Ideology of Cybernetic Totalist Intellectuals (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Annotations/DEFAULT.14.html) an essay by Jaron Lanier which is very strongly critical of "meme totalists" who assert memes over bodies.
- Culture as Complex Adaptive System (http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00003471/) by Hokky Situngkir - formal interplays between memetics and cultural analysis.
- Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission (http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/overview.html)
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