Author
|
Topic: Memetics - a science yet? (Read 816 times) |
|
rhinoceros
Archon
Gender: 
Posts: 1318
Reputation: 8.38
Rate rhinoceros
My point is ...
  
|
 |
Memetics - a science yet?
« on: 2003-05-06 08:13:17 » |
 |
[rhinoceros]
Today I received an interesting newsletter from the Journal of Memetics, dealing with what it would take for making memetics into a science. Before going into that, here is some background info.
After all these years, there is still no universal agreement about what a meme is or what memetics is supposed to do -- lectures mostly, I guess. So, I have been following Aunger's efforts to bring together memeticists and memologists from different scientific disciplines.
Robert Aunger, 1999 -- A Report On The Conference "Do Memes Account For Culture?" Held At King's College, Cambridge
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/1999/vol3/cambridge_conference.html
[rhinoceros]
It seems that scientists coming from Evolutionary Biology, Psychology, and Social Sciences saw memetics as something addressing different questions in different ways.
Eventually, Aunger compiled a book out of this. Here is a presentation including some chapters from the book.
Robert Aunger, 1999 -- Darwinizing Culture (presentation and excerpts)
http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/%7Erva20/Darwin.html
[rhinoceros]
As Daniel Dennett pointed out in the Foreword of that book:
Daniel Dennett, 2000 -- Foreword to "Darwinizing Culture"
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/aungerfore.pen.htm
"Good ideas can go extinct and bad ideas can infect whole societies. The future prospects of the meme idea are uncertain on both counts, and the point of this book is not to ensure that the meme meme flourishes, but to ensure that if it does, it ought to."
[rhinoceros]
By the way, here is a couple of interesting articles by Daniel Dennett, who is considered by most as the "authority" at memetics.
Daniel Dennett, 1998 -- Memes: Myths, Misunderstandings and Misgivings
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/MEMEMYTH.FIN.htm
"Currently the internet blooms with dozens of websites proclaiming the birth of the new science of memetics. Most of this is simply awful, but that should not surprise us. As Sturgeon's Law reminds us, 95% of everything is crap.
The hard part--especially during these early days of proto-memetics--is to identify the 5% that is actually good. Sturgeon's Law also suggests, of course, that 95% of the criticism of memes and memetics is also crap, so we needn't waste our time rebutting every silly, anxiety-driven objection."
[rhinoceros]
In the above article Dennett argues against Pinker and specifically against the idea that cultural evolution is Lamarckian (i.e. that traits acquired during one's lifetime are inherited). Dennett says that cultural evolution is in fact a kind of Darwinian "artificial selection" as in breeding.
A very convoluted argument I must say... Check it for yourselves.
Another interesting article by Dennett was this one:
Daniel Dennett, 1999 -- The Evolution of Culture
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett/dennett_p2.html
[rhinoceros]
Now, here is the newsletter I received from the Journal of Memetics today. The author makes an attempt at clarifying how and where the meme concept is used and then he goes on to propose a falsifiable theoretical model.
David Dirlam, 2003 -- Competing Memes Analysis
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2003/vol7/dirlam_dk.html
<snip>
Abstract
Aunger (2000) and Edmonds (2002) argue that memetics is a theory without a methodology, in imminent danger of dying from lack of novel interpretations and empirical work. Edmonds challenges memeticists to conduct empirical tests. This article presents Competing Memes Analysis, an empirical methodology that can readily be applied to significant social problems. The methodology is implemented in three steps. Step 1 identifies the organization of memes within an activity. Each activity is assumed to exhibit numerous small groups of memes where each meme within a group competes with all other memes in the group and can be combined with any meme from any other group. The succession of memes that occurs with increasing experience can be a powerful clue to identifying competing memes. Step 2 collects records of activities and codes them for the presence or absence of each meme identified in Step 1. Any activity that people acquire from each other by imitation can be readily coded for the presence or absence of competing memes. Step 3 analyzes changing frequencies of each coded meme over time or space. Models of these changes can give useful clues to suggest empirical studies that will provide important social and scientific results. Ecology’s Lotka-Volterra model of competing species illustrates the usefulness to memetics of population models.
<end snip>
|
|
|
|
|
rhinoceros
Archon
Gender:
Posts: 1318
Reputation: 8.38
Rate rhinoceros
My point is ...
|
|
Re:Memetics - a science yet?
« Reply #1 on: 2003-05-06 08:26:29 » |
|
[rhinoceros]
In my post about the challenges which memetics face, I left out a very important article, the one to which Dirlam responds. I am afraid Dirlam's article makes much less sense without this one.
Bruce Edmonds -- Three Challenges for the Survival of Memetics
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/edmonds_b_letter.html
<quote>
In my opinion, memetics has reached a crunch point. If, in the near future, it does not demonstrate that it can be more than merely a conceptual framework, it will be selected out. While it is true that many successful paradigms started out as such a framework and later moved on to become pivotal theories, it also true that many more have simply faded away. A framework for thinking about phenomena can be useful if it delivers new insights but, ultimately, if there are no usable results academics will look elsewhere.
Such frameworks have considerable power over those that hold them for these people will see the world through these `theoretical spectacles' (Kuhn 1969) - to the converted the framework appears necessary. The converted are ambitious to demonstrate the universality of their way of seeing things; more mundane but demonstrable examples seem to them as simply obvious. However such frameworks will not continue to persuade new academics if it does not provide them with any substantial explanatory or predictive `leverage'. Memetics is no exception to this pattern.
For this reason I am challenging the memetic community of academics to achieve the following three tasks of different types:
- a conclusive case-study;
- a theory for when memetic models are appropriate;
- and a simulation of the emergence of a memetic process.
<snip>
"Stop talking about Memetics and start doing it."
<snip>
Challenge 1: A conclusive case study
Challenge 2: A theoretical model for when it is more appropriate to use a memetic model
Challenge 3: A simulation model showing the true emergence of a memetic process
<end snip>
|
|
|
|
|
Hermit
Archon
Posts: 4287
Reputation: 8.94
Rate Hermit
Prime example of a practically perfect person
|
|
Re:Memetics - a science yet?
« Reply #2 on: 2003-05-06 14:05:00 » |
|
Thank-you rhino.
Very nice post and neat sequence of articles. So nice I have Faq'ed it at http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=31;action=display;threadid=28393
Kind Regards
Hermit
|
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
|
|
|
|
Logged
