Editing Memetics (section)

==History==
In his book ''[[The Selfish Gene]]'' (1976), the evolutionary biologist [[Richard Dawkins]] used the term ''[[meme]]'' to describe a unit of human [[Cultural learning|cultural transmission]] analogous to the [[gene]], arguing that replication also happens in [[culture]], albeit in a different sense. While [[cultural evolution]] itself is a much older topic, with a history that dates back at least as far as [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]'s era, Dawkins (1976) proposed that the meme is a unit of culture residing in the brain and is the mutating [[self-replication|replicator]] in human cultural evolution. After Dawkins, many discussed this unit of culture as evolutionary "information" which replicates with rules analogous  to [[Natural selection|Darwinian selection]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hull |first=David L.  |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/876723188 |title=Science and selection : essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science |date=2001 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-64339-2 |oclc=876723188}}</ref> A [[Replicator (evolution unit)|replicator]] is a pattern that can influence its surroundings – that is, it has [[Causality|causal agency]] – and can propagate. This proposal resulted in debate among anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, and scientists of other disciplines. Dawkins did not provide a comprehensive explanation of how replication of units of information in the brain controls human behaviour and culture, as the main focus of the book was on gene expression. Dawkins apparently did not intend to present a comprehensive theory of ''memetics'' in ''The Selfish Gene'', but rather coined the term ''meme'' in a speculative spirit.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}} Accordingly, different researchers came to define the term "unit of information" in different ways.

The evolutionary model of cultural information transfer is based on the concept that memes&mdash;units of information&mdash;have an independent existence, are self-replicating, and are subject to selective evolution through environmental forces.<ref name="Polichak">{{Cite book |last=Shermer |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gr4snwg7iaEC&pg=PA664 |title=The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: [2 Volumes] |date=2002-11-14 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-57607-653-8 |language=en}}</ref> Starting from a proposition put forward in the writings of Dawkins, this model has formed the basis of a new area of study, one that looks at the self-replicating units of culture. It has been proposed that just as memes are analogous to genes, memetics is analogous to genetics.

The modern memetics movement dates from the mid-1980s. A January 1983 "[[Metamagical Themas]]" column<ref name="Metamagical Themas">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o8jzWF7rD6oC&q=On+viral+sentences+and+self-replicating+structures&pg=PA49|title=Metamagical themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern |via=Google Books|date=1996-04-04|access-date=2010-02-18|isbn=978-0-465-04566-2|last1=Hofstadter|first1=Douglas|publisher=Basic Books}}{{Dead link|date=August 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}<br/><br/>

NOTE: If the above proves to be a "Dead link", – as the note attached since "August 2023" seems to be saying, then ... it might help to just go to https://books.google.com/books?id=NSpMDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=o8jzWF7rD6oC#v=onepage&q&f=false , and scroll down for a few pages, (to the "'''''Short Contents'''''"), and then click on the hyperlink there – [right after the links to the first '''two''' chapters] – the one [hyperlink] that points to the third chapter, which is displayed as "'''3. On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures'''". It might have been simpler – that is, a better 'work-around' – to just include a direct URL here, that a reader could click on, but ... the [editor] author of this "NOTE" did not understand [how to figure out] how to do that (at least, ... not without following the 'suggestion' contained in the last 3 words of the legend <br/>
::::"No preview available for this page. [https://books.google.com/books?id=NSpMDQAAQBAJ&dq=o8jzWF7rD6oC&sitesec=buy&source=gbs_snippet#v=onepage&q=essence&f=false Buy this book]"<br/>
which [legend] sometimes tended to appear – several times – during some of the 'failed attempts' to find a better 'work-around'.) 

</ref> by [[Douglas Hofstadter]], in ''Scientific American'', was influential – as was his 1985 book of the same name. "Memeticist" was coined as analogous to "geneticist" – originally in ''The Selfish Gene.'' Later Arel Lucas suggested that the discipline that studies memes and their connections to human and other carriers of them be known as "memetics" by analogy with "genetics".<ref name="Metamagical Themas"/> Dawkins' ''The Selfish Gene'' has been a factor in attracting the attention of people of disparate intellectual backgrounds. Another stimulus was the publication in 1991 of ''[[Consciousness Explained]]'' by Tufts University philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]], which incorporated the meme concept into a [[theory of mind|theory of the mind]]. In his 1991 essay "[[Viruses of the Mind]]", Richard Dawkins used memetics to explain the phenomenon of religious belief and the various characteristics of organised religions. By then, memetics had also become a theme appearing in fiction (e.g. Neal Stephenson's ''[[Snow Crash]]'').

The idea of ''language as a virus'' had already been introduced by [[William S. Burroughs]] as early as 1962 in his novel ''[[The Ticket That Exploded]]'', and continued in ''[[The Electronic Revolution]]'', published in 1970 in ''[[The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs|The Job]]''.

The foundation of memetics in its full modern incarnation was launched by [[Douglas Rushkoff|Douglas Rushkoff's]] ''Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture'' in 1995,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://rushkoff.com/books/media-virus/|title=Media Virus!|website=Rushkoff|access-date=14 April 2019|archive-date=13 June 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080613125930/https://rushkoff.com/books/media-virus/|url-status=live}}</ref> and was accelerated with the publication in 1996 of two more books by authors outside the academic mainstream: ''Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme'' by former [[Microsoft]] executive turned motivational speaker and professional poker-player [[Richard Brodie (programmer)|Richard Brodie]], and ''Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society'' by [[Aaron Lynch (writer)|Aaron Lynch]], a mathematician and philosopher who worked for many years as an engineer at [[Fermilab]]. Lynch claimed to have conceived his theory totally independently of any contact with academics in the cultural evolutionary sphere, and apparently was not aware of ''The Selfish Gene'' until his book was very close to publication.{{Citation needed|date=April 2019}}

Around the same time as the publication of the books by Lynch and Brodie the e-journal ''Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission''<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/ |title=''Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission'' |access-date=2009-09-29 |archive-date=2011-08-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810103732/http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/ |url-status=dead}}</ref> (published electronically from 1997 to 2005<ref name="MemeticsIssues">{{cite web|url=http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/issues.html|title=Index to all JoM-EMIT Issues|access-date=2009-10-27|work=Journal of Memetics|archive-date=2011-08-10|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810120049/http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/issues.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>) first appeared. It was first hosted by the Centre for Policy Modelling at [[Manchester Metropolitan University]]. The e-journal soon became the central point for publication and debate within the nascent memeticist community. (There had been a short-lived paper-based memetics publication starting in 1990, the ''Journal of Ideas'' edited by Elan Moritz.<ref name="autogenerated1991">{{cite web|url=http://archsix.com/omega23.com/Journal_of_Ideas/|title=The Journal of Ideas (ISSN 1049-6335): Contents|website=archsix.com|access-date=14 April 2019|archive-date=9 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171009041821/http://archsix.com/omega23.com/Journal_of_Ideas/|url-status=live}}</ref>) In 1999, [[Susan Blackmore]], a psychologist at the [[University of the West of England]], published ''[[The Meme Machine]]'', which more fully worked out the ideas of Dennett, Lynch, and Brodie and attempted to compare and contrast them with various approaches from the cultural evolutionary mainstream, as well as providing novel (and controversial) memetics-based theories for the evolution of language and the human sense of individual selfhood.

=== Etymology ===
The term ''meme'' derives from the [[Greek language|Ancient Greek]] μιμητής (''mimētḗs''), meaning "imitator, pretender". The similar term ''mneme'' was used in 1904, by the German evolutionary biologist [[Richard Semon]], best known for his development of the [[engram (neuropsychology)|engram]] theory of [[memory]], in his work ''Die mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen'', translated into English in 1921 as ''The Mneme''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Semon |first1=Richard Wolfgang |title=The Mneme |date=1921 |publisher=Allen & Unwin |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924100387210/page/n10 |access-date=17 June 2019}}</ref> Until [[Daniel Schacter]] published ''Forgotten Ideas, Neglected Pioneers: Richard Semon and the Story of Memory'' in 2000, Semon's work had little influence, though it was quoted extensively in [[Erwin Schrödinger]]’s 1956 [[Tarner Lecture]] “[[What is Life? (Schrödinger)|Mind and Matter]]”. Richard Dawkins (1976) apparently coined the word ''meme'' independently of Semon, writing this:
<blockquote>{{"'}}Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EJeHTt8hW7UC&q=%22'Mimeme'+comes+from+a+suitable+Greek+root,+but+I+want+a+monosyllable+that+sounds+a+bit+like+'gene'.+I+hope+my+classicist+friends+will+forgive+me+if+I+abbreviate+mimeme+to+meme.+If+it+is+any+consolation,+it+could+alternatively+be+thought+of+as+being+related+to+'memory',+or+to+the+French+word+m%C3%AAme.%22&pg=PA192|title=The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition|last=Dawkins|first=Richard|date=2006-03-16|publisher=Oxford UP|isbn=9780191537554|pages=182|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>[[David Hull (philosopher)|David Hull]] (2001) pointed out Dawkins's oversight of Semon's work. Hull suggests this early work as an alternative origin to memetics by which Dawkins's memetic theory and classicist connection to the concept can be negotiated.<blockquote>"Why not date the beginnings of memetics (or mnemetics) as 1904 or at the very least 1914? If [Semon's] two publications are taken as the beginnings of memetics, then the development of memetics [...] has been around for almost a hundred years without much in the way of conceptual or empirical advance!"<ref name="Hull 43–67">{{Citation |last=Hull |first=David L. |title=Taking memetics seriously: Memetics will be what we make it |date=2001-01-04 |work=Darwinizing CultureThe Status of Memetics as a Science |pages=43–67 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192632449.003.0003 |access-date=2022-12-18 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192632449.003.0003 |isbn=978-0-19-263244-9|url-access=subscription }}</ref></blockquote>Despite this, Semon's work remains mostly understood as distinct to memetic origins even with the overt similarities accounted for by Hull.

===Internalists and externalists===
The memetics movement split almost immediately into two. The first group were those who wanted to stick to Dawkins' definition of a meme as "a unit of [[cultural transmission]]". Gibron Burchett, a memeticist responsible for helping to research and co-coin the term [[memetic engineering]], along with Leveious Rolando and Larry Lottman, has stated that a meme can be defined, more precisely, as "a unit of [[cultural]] [[information]] that can be copied, located in the brain". This thinking is more in line with Dawkins' second definition of the meme in his book ''[[The Extended Phenotype]]''. The second group wants to redefine memes as observable [[cultural artifact]]s and behaviors. However, in contrast to those two positions, the article "Consciousness in meme machines" by Susan Blackmore rejects neither movement.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Blackmore|first=Susan|author-link=Susan Blackmore |date=2003|title=Consciousness in meme machines|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies|publisher=Imprint Academic}}</ref> Andrej Drapal<ref>MEMETICS, Truth and Freedom as Ontological, Phenomenological, and Epistemological Concepts Elucidated by Memetics</ref> tried to bridge the gap with his differentiation of memes as quantum entities existing per se in quantum superposition and collapsing when detected by brains from cultural artifacts. Memes are to artifacts as genotypes are to phenotypes.

These two schools became known as the "internalists" and the "externalists." Prominent internalists included both Lynch and Brodie; the most vocal externalists included Derek Gatherer, a geneticist from [[Liverpool John Moores University]], and William Benzon, a writer on cultural evolution and music. The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a [[quantitative research|quantitative]] science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the directly quantifiable aspects of culture. Internalists countered with various arguments: that brain states will eventually be directly observable with advanced technology, that most cultural anthropologists agree that culture is about [[belief]]s and not artifacts, or that artifacts cannot be replicators in the same sense as mental entities (or DNA) are replicators. The debate became so heated that a 1998 Symposium on Memetics, organised as part of the 15th International Conference on [[Cybernetics]], passed a motion calling for an end to definitional debates. McNamara demonstrated in 2011 that functional connectivity profiling using neuroimaging tools enables the observation of the processing of internal memes, "i-memes", in response to external "e-memes".<ref>{{cite journal|last1=McNamara|first1=Adam|title=Can we Measure Memes?|journal=Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience|date=2011|doi=10.3389/fnevo.2011.00001|pmc=3118481|pmid=21720531|volume=3|page=1|doi-access=free}}</ref>
This was developed further in a paper "Memetics and Neural Models of Conspiracy Theories" by Duch, where a model of memes as a quasi-stable neural associative memory [[attractor network]] is proposed, and a formation of [[Memeplex]] leading to conspiracy theories illustrated with the simulation of a self-organizing network.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Duch|first1=Włodzisław|title=Memetics and Neural Models of Conspiracy Theories|journal=Patterns|date=2021|doi=10.1016/j.patter.2021.100353|pmc=8600249|pmid=34820645|volume=2|issue=11|page=100353|doi-access=free}}</ref>

An advanced statement of the internalist school came in 2002 with the publication of ''The Electric Meme'', by Robert Aunger, an anthropologist from the [[University of Cambridge]]. Aunger also organised a conference in Cambridge in 1999, at which prominent sociologists and anthropologists were able to give their assessment of the progress made in memetics to that date. This resulted in the publication of ''Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science'', edited by Aunger and with a foreword by Dennett, in 2001.<ref>Aunger, Robert. "Darwinizing culture: The status of memetics as a science." (2001).</ref>

===Decline===
In 2005, the ''Journal of Memetics'' ceased publication and published a set of articles on the future of memetics. The website states that although "there was to be a relaunch... after several years nothing has happened".<ref name="JoMFrontpage">{{cite web|title=Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission|url=http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/|work=Journal of Memetics|access-date=17 September 2010|archive-date=10 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110810103732/http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Susan Blackmore]] left the University of the West of England to become a freelance science-writer and now concentrates more on the field of consciousness and cognitive science. Derek Gatherer moved to work as a computer programmer in the pharmaceutical industry, although he still occasionally publishes on memetics-related matters. [[Richard Brodie (programmer)|Richard Brodie]] is now climbing the world professional poker rankings. [[Aaron Lynch (writer)|Aaron Lynch]] disowned the memetics community and the words "meme" and "memetics" (without disowning the ideas in his book), adopting the self-description "thought contagionist". He died in 2005.

[[Susan Blackmore]] (2002) re-stated the definition of meme as: whatever is copied from one person to another person, whether habits, skills, songs, stories, or any other kind of information. Further she said that memes, like genes, are replicators in the sense as defined by Dawkins.<ref>[[Richard Dawkins|Dawkins, R.]] (1982) [http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/dawkins_replicators.html "Replicators and Vehicles"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210226171250/http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/dawkins_replicators.html |date=2021-02-26}} King's College Sociobiology Group, eds., ''Current Problems in Sociobiology'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp.&nbsp;45–64. "A replicator may be defined as any entity in the universe of which copies are made."</ref>
That is, they are information that is copied. Memes are copied by [[imitation]], teaching and other methods. The copies are not perfect: memes are copied with variation; moreover, they compete for space in our memories and for the chance to be copied again. Only some of the variants can survive. The combination of these three elements (copies; variation; competition for survival) forms precisely the condition for [[Darwinian evolution]], and so memes (and hence human cultures) evolve. Large groups of memes that are copied and passed on together are called [[co-adapted]] meme complexes, or ''[[memeplexes]]''. In Blackmore's definition, the way that a meme replicates is through imitation. This requires [[Human brain|brain]] capacity to generally imitate a model or selectively imitate the model. Since the process of social learning varies from one person to another, the imitation process cannot be said to be completely imitated. The sameness of an idea may be expressed with different memes supporting it. This is to say that the [[mutation]] rate in memetic evolution is extremely high, and mutations are even possible within each and every iteration of the imitation process. It becomes very interesting when we see that a social system composed of a complex network of microinteractions exists, but at the macro level an order emerges to create culture.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}

Many researchers of cultural evolution regard memetic theory of this time a failed paradigm superseded by [[dual inheritance theory]].<ref>{{cite journal|author=Radim Chvaja|title=Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study.|journal=Perspectives on Science|year=2020|volume=28|issue=4|pages=542–570|doi=10.1162/posc_a_00350|doi-access=free}}</ref> Others instead suggest it is not superseded but rather holds a small but distinct intellectual space in cultural evolutionary theory.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Cao |first=Rosa |date=December 2020 |title=Crowding out Memetic Explanation |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S003182480001655X/type/journal_article |journal=Philosophy of Science |language=en |volume=87 |issue=5 |pages=1160–1171 |doi=10.1086/710518 |issn=0031-8248 |s2cid=225622281|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

=== "Internet Memetics" ===
{{Also see|Internet meme}}
A new framework of ''Internet Memetics'' initially borrowed Blackmore's conceptual developments but is effectively a data-driven approach, focusing on digital artifacts. This was led primarily by conceptual developments Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel (2006) <ref>{{Cite book |first=Colin |last=Lankshear |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1306561905 |title=New literacies everyday practices and social learning |date=2011 |publisher=Open University Press |isbn=978-1-283-26917-9 |oclc=1306561905}}</ref> and [[Limor Shifman]] and Mike Thelwall (2009).<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Shifman |first1=Limor |last2=Thelwall |first2=Mike |date=December 2009 |title=Assessing global diffusion with Web memetics: The spread and evolution of a popular joke |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21185 |journal=Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology |language=en |volume=60 |issue=12 |pages=2567–2576 |doi=10.1002/asi.21185 |access-date=2022-12-18 |archive-date=2022-12-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221218223827/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21185 |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Shiman, in particular, followed Susan Blackmore in rejecting the internalist and externalist debate, however did not offer a clear connection to prior evolutionary frameworks. Later in 2014, she rejected the historical relevance of "information" to memetics. Instead of memes being ''units of cultural information'', she argued information is exclusively delegated to be "the ways in which addressers position themselves in relation to [a meme instance's] text, its linguistic codes, the addressees, and other potential speakers."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Shifman |first=Limor |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/860711989 |title=Memes in digital culture |date=2014 |isbn=978-1-4619-4733-2 |publisher=MIT Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |oclc=860711989 |access-date=2022-12-18 |archive-date=2022-06-22 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220622003628/https://www.worldcat.org/title/memes-in-digital-culture/oclc/860711989 |url-status=live}}</ref> This is what she called ''stance,'' which is analytically distinguished from the ''content'' and ''form'' of her meme. As such, Shifman's developments can be seen as critical to Dawkins's meme, but also as a somewhat distinct conceptualization of the meme as a communicative system dependent on the internet and social media platforms. By introducing memetics as an internet study there has been a rise in empirical research. That is, memetics in this conceptualization has been notably testable by the application of social science methodologies. It has been popular enough that following Lankshear and Knobel's (2019) review of empirical trends, they warn those interested in memetics that theoretical development should not be ignored, concluding that, <blockquote>"[R]ight now would be a good time for anyone seriously interested in memes to revisit Dawkins’ work in light of how internet memes have evolved over the past three decades and reflect on what most merits careful and conscientious research attention."<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Lankshear |first1=Colin |last2=Knobel |first2=Michele |date=2019 |title=Memes, Macros, Meaning, and Menace: Some Trends in Internet Memes |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.18848/2470-9247/cgp/v04i04/43-57 |journal=The Journal of Communication and Media Studies |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=43–57 |doi=10.18848/2470-9247/cgp/v04i04/43-57 |s2cid=214369629 |issn=2470-9247|url-access=subscription }}</ref></blockquote>As Lankshear and Knobel show, the Internet Memetic reconceptualization is limited in addressing long-standing memetic theory concerns. It is not clear that existing Internet Memetic theory's departure from conceptual dichotomies between internalist and externalist debate are compatible with most earlier concerns of memetics. Internet Memetics might be understood as a study without an agreed upon theory, as present research tends to focus on empirical developments answering theories of other areas of cultural research. It exists more as a set of distributed studies than a methodology, theory, field, or discipline, with a few exceptions such as Shifman and those closely following her motivating framework.