PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Memetics, Noncoding Dna, Heredity
30 Nov 2015
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One view: the conditions for evolution by natural selection occur in culture: memetic. Darwin: a struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, they owe their success to their own inherent virtue . We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 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 . Proposed to be units of cultural transmission in the way that genes are units of biological transmission. Often described as the smallest units - gets de ned in its functional terms. Genes encode the biological information needed to build a protein; memes encode ideas.
