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A meme, () as defined within memetics theory, comprises a theoretical unit of culture information, the building block of Sociocultural evolution or cultural diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogyly to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetics information and of biological evolution.*Lasn, Kalle (2000) Culture jam. New York: Quill. p.123 Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).

Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976.Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 11. Memes:the new replicators, Oxford University, 1976, second edition, December 1989, ISBN 0-19-217773-7; April 1992, ISBN 0-19-857519-X; trade paperback, September 1990, ISBN 0-19-286092-5 He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.

Meme theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection similarly to Charles Darwin biology evolution through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and Biological inheritance influencing an organism's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinction, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutation. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."{{cite book |author=Kelly, Kevin |title=Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world |publisher=Addison-Wesley |location=Boston |year=1994 |pages=360 |isbn=0-201-48340-8 |oclc= |doi=-->

"But if we consider culture as its own self organizing system,- a system with its own agenda and pressure to survive- then the history of humanity gets even more interesting. As Richard Dawkins has shown, systems of self-replicating ideas or memes can quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviours. I assign no higher motive to a cultural entity than the primitive drive to reproduce itself and modify its environment to aid its spread. One way the self organizing system can do this is by consuming human biological resources.""In Danny Hillis's terminology, civilized humans are 'the world's most successful symbionts' — culture and biology behaving as mutually beneficial parasites for each other."

A short story written in 1876 by Mark Twain, A Literary Nightmare, describes his encounter with a jingle so "catchy" that it plays over and over in his mind until he finally sings it out loud and infects others (also known as an earworm).

Origins and concepts first introduced the meme concept.

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, which first came into popular use with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene". The concept received relatively little attention until the late 1980s, when several academics took it up, notably the American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, who promoted the idea firstly in his book on the philosophy of mind, Consciousness Explained (1991), and then in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). Robert Anton Wilson also discussed the concept in his writings.

Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity (such as a song, an idea or a religion) that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for an hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.

Considerable controversy surrounds the word meme and its associated field, memetics, is not accepted as an academic discipline. In part this arises because a number of possible (though not mutually exclusive) interpretations of the nature of the concept have arisen:

The least controversial claim suggests that memes provide a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's eye view — as if memes, or the people who carry them, acted to maximise their own replication and survival — can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Dawkins himself seems to have favoured this approach.

Other theorists, such as Francis Heylighen, have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics in order for people to regard it as a real and useful scientific discipline. Given the nebulous (and in many cases subjective) nature of many memes, providing such an empirical grounding has to date proved challenging. However, a recent study by Mikael Sandberg, further elaborates the memetic approach to empirical studies of innovation diffusion in organisations. "The Evolution of IT Innovations in Swedish Organizations: A Darwinian Critique of ‘Lamarckian’ Institutional Economics", Journal of Evolutionary Economics (on-line 2006, in print 2007)

A third approach, exemplified by Dennett and by Susan Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine (1999), seeks to place memes at the centre of a radical and counter-intuitive naturalism (philosophy) theory of mind and of personal identity (philosophy). Evan Louis Sheehan uses the hierarchical model of cerebral cortex architecture proposed by Jeff Hawkins to develop such a memetic theory of mind in his book The Mocking Memes: A Basis for Automated Intelligence.

Etymology Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, meaning "memory"), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as "Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word mneme appears in English (language) in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.

According to Dawkins, who coined the word "meme" without knowing about mnemes, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos, "mimic"). Dawkins said he wanted "a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like gene".Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, USA; 3rd edition, April 24, 2006, ISBN 0-1992-9114-4), p. 192.

To quote Dawkins more extensively:

Dawkins' genetic analogy Richard Dawkins introduced the term after writing that evolution depended not on the particular molecular genetics of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replication unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought might prove useful in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

This analogy suggests that the definition of a meme should refer to the physical structure, or abstract code representing that structure, representing a real idea as observed in situ. Genes do not depend upon their transfer for their current existence; they may need a definite, although not necessarily unique physical structure. Similarly, a book, play, song, or computer file might replicate a meme.

William H. Calvin offers the concept of a Darwinian process in the generation of conscious thought, based on his theory of resonant electrochemistry in the neocortex.

Dawkins himself, in a speech on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Selfish Gene, described his motivation for postulating memes: he portrayed the idea not so much as an attempt at creating an account for cultural complexity, but rather as seeking something with which the selfish-genetic mechanism would still work with unreliable replicators:

Memes as discrete units Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", memeticists in general promote varying definitions of the concept of the meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics.

Although memeticists speak of memes as discrete units, this need not imply that thoughts somehow become quantized or that "atomic" ideas exist which one cannot break down into smaller pieces. The meme as a unit simply provides a convenient way of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word was first uttered. The "word itself" meme will most likely survive many more generations (after transmission alone or in other sentences) than the "speech in its entirety" meme will survive (due to errors of memory, abridged versions, etc.)

This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a self-replicating set of code. The gene in this definition does not consist of a set number of nucleotides, but simply a collection of nucleotides (possibly in many different locations on the Deoxyribonucleic acid) that replicate together and code for some set of behaviors or body parts.

In 1981 biologists Charles J. Lumsden and Edward Osborne Wilson published a theory of gene/culture co-evolution in the book Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process. They argued that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic memory. Wilson later adopted the term meme as the best existing name for the fundamental unit of cultural inheritance and elaborated upon the fundamental role of memes in unifying the Natural science and social sciences in his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

Memeplexes Much of the study of memes focuses on groups of memes called memeplexes (also known as meme complexes or as memecomplexes) — such as religious, cultural, or political doctrines and systems. Memeplexes contain mutually supportive memes that together become more evolutionarily successful. These memeplexes may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes which, if they fit with a memeplex, can "piggyback" on that success. Memeplexes of religion provide a commonly-cited example. In the case of Christianity, the theory suggests, the Christian memeplex evolved from Jewish religious teachings to form, among others, the Catholic church.For discussion and relevant references on the Jewish origins of Christianity, see Origins of Christianity.Following the East-West Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and later Protestant Reformation giving rise to various Protestant churches, various people have added and deleted individual memes, resulting in the formation of completely different memeplexes (religions/sects) within the basic umbrella of Christianity,For a generalized account of the origins and historical development of religious sects, see the Max Weberian account of church-sect typology.as well as within (for example) the Catholic,Note the existence of the Old Catholic Church, for example; and arguably Anglo-Catholicism.Orthodox,Numerous examples of and references to many sects of just the Russian Orthodox tradition appear in the article on Old Believers.and Protestant traditions.The article on Protestantism provides an overview of major sub-groups within the Protestant fold.(Without some concept of cultural evolution, one might have to postulate repeated and contradictory divine/demonic revelations in order to account for the development of religion and for the existence of Christian denominations.)

Transmission Life forms transmit information vertically (from generation to generation) via replication of genes. Memes can also transmit information vertically by replication. Some life forms can spread from their host horizontally, within groups of contemporaries. Memes also spread from hosts in such a manner. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time: Copernicus re-discovered the ancient heliocentric views of Aristarchus of Samos, but Aristarchian memes survive. One may view memeplexes as assisting the survival and transmission of memes in a symbiotic relationship.

Memes spread by the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. For example, the fashion-value that "less is more" spreads through the behavior of people dressing down in understated clothes and acting superior. This behavior then has the effect of showing others a real-life example of this fashion-value, thereby conveying to them the fashion statement that "less is more". Verbal transmission can supplement or replace this imitative method.

Those interested in tracking how memes spread through culture may use memetrackers, websites that allow one to see how people receive, use, and spread new information on the World Wide Web. Cameron Marlowe's Blogdex project pioneered research on this topic.

Memetics Memetics, the study of memes, remains a controversial field among many scientists and skeptics. Memetics originated when Richard Dawkins reduced the process of biological genetic evolution to its most fundamental unit: the replicator (or gene). Dawkins, in a search for parallels and other things that he might classify as replicators, suggested that the information and ideas in brains — culture, for example — could function as replicators as well. Computer software may represent another form of replicator with which evolution may eventually build grand things, whether socially as in the open source movement, or through the use of evolutionary algorithms.

Memetics offers maximum explanatory value in cases where one cannot demonstrate the truth of the contents of the meme. For example, one can readily show that washing hands helps to prevent illness, so the best explanation for the widespread popularity of this practice is that "it works", though memetics still helps explain the rate of spread, and details such as why the practice of washing hands before surgery took so long to catch on. Memetics, however, excels in explaining the spread of certain value-judgements ("chastity is important"), preferences ("pork is repulsive"), superstitions ("black cats bring bad luck") and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs ("'X' is the one true God"); since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena by conventional scientific methods. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a "meme", therefore, does not constitute an insult, but dismissing it as "just a meme" does. Calling a belief a meme does not constitute an insult in that most people who believe in memes regard all beliefs as memes anyway.

Memetic methodology Memetics often takes concepts from the theory of evolution (especially population genetics) and applies them to human culture. Memetics also uses mathematical models to try to explain many very controversial subjects such as religion and political systems. Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in the fields (such as sociology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, etc.) most relevant to the claims and methodologies of memetics.

Memeticists generate much memetic terminology by prepending 'mem(e)-' to an existing, usually biological, term or by putting 'mem(e)' in place of 'gen(e)' in various terms. Examples include: meme pool, memotype, memetic engineer, meme-complex.

Some concepts of memetics The term memetic association refers to the idea that memes herding behavior. For example, a meme for blue jeans includes memes for trouser-flies, riveted clothing, blue dye, cotton clothing, belt (clothing)-loops and double-sewn seams. In this way, groups of memes can operate symbiosis (to use a biological analogy) in the sense that they act for their mutual benefit/survival.

The phrase memetic drift (formed by analogy to genetic drift) refers to the process of a meme changing as it replicates between one person to another. Memetic drift increases when meme transmission occurs with variations. Very few memes show strong memetic inertia (the characteristic of a meme to manifest in the same way and to have the same impact regardless of who receives or transmits the meme). Memetic inertia increases when the meme transfers along with mnemonic devices, such as a rhyme, to preserve the memory of the meme prior to its transmission. See Telephone (game) for one example of memetic drift.

Doubts about memetics A basic difficulty in the study of memes involves the frequent lack of clarity as to what divides one meme from another. Whether this matters may remain a matter of taste.

In much the same way that the selfish gene concept offers a way of understanding and reasoning about aspects of biological evolution, the meme concept can conceivably assist in the better understanding of some otherwise puzzling aspects of human culture (and learned behaviors of other animals as well). However, if one cannot test for "better" empirically, the question will remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a philosophy of science scientific theory. Memetics thus remains a science in its infancy, a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to detractors.

Another objection to the study of the evolution of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves the fact that the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection pressures being neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation rates. There seems no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes.Kim Sterelney and Paul E. Griffiths, Sex and Death: And Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p.333

Applications of memetics Memetic accounts of religion Memetics regards religion itself as memetic, and Richard Dawkins has often discussed religion.

Some fundamentalist evangelism religious movements act predominantly to swell the reach of their faith-meme. These movements devote a large amount of time to evangelical activity.

Many of the world's most successful religions demonstrate memetic modification over time — the theologies of the 21st century differ to a greater or lesser extent from the theologies of previous centuries.See History of theology for accounts of the varying emphases and interests of theologians in various traditions over time.Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism (and their descendants) have all developed through variation, modification and memetic recombination from a shared monotheism meme: Zoroastrianism appears to have functioned as an important and widely-shared religious ancestor (see Lawrence Mills, Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia, Chicago, 1913), contributing through Judaism to Christianity, Islam and their many derivative religions. See for example the discussion and quotations in http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/influenc.htm

The religious right in the United States of America attaches conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism ("meme piggybacking"), and fundamentalist Christianity has associated a particular set of politico-social ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have "replicated" very effectively for many centuries. For other examples of piggybacking involving religious memes, note the conversion-histories of the Kingdom of Hungarys and of Kievan Rus': adoption of Catholicism and Orthodoxy respectively entailed perceived cultural, political and diplomatic benefits and adherence to perceived mainstream civilization.Compare for example the discussion in the article Christianization of Kievan Rus'.

In Western world, universities evolved from medieval religious institutions devoted to learning. Of the nine colonial colleges in the British colonies of North America, eight had affiliations with religious institutions. Many US colleges separated themselves from their seminaries, because the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents federal funding of religious organizations. One can think of American academia as an offshoot religion that eliminated less adaptive memes (beliefs in the supernatural) in response to a selective pressure (funding restrictions).

A tendency exists in memetics to disparage religious memes, beginning at least as early as Dawkins's openly-expressed atheism. Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) calls all religious memes "mind viruses". Author Neal Stephenson speculates that traditional religions act as mental immune systems to suppress new (and potentially harmful) memes.Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash.Bantam Books 1992. ISBN 0-553-08853-X Some compare this process to a scenario where the action of a virus (here a religion or a "bundle" of religious memes) proves ineffective and maladaptive if it kills its host(s), or to where the presence of less-harmful bacteria on the skin prevent infection by more-harmful organisms. For example, popular Christianity forbids both murder and suicide, and its precise definitions of Christian heresy ensure that properly-educated Christians have difficulty in accepting new religions or new viewpoints which advocate such actions.

Susan Blackmore has made a case that the study of Zen meditation in itself comprises a process of meme "pruning", i.e., a means to remove experiential clichés that reduce the value of life. This has not exempted Zen itself from serving as a source of highly mobile memes, such as "the sound of one hand clapping" koan or exclaiming "Mu (negative)". please review this statementit is not clear at all

Daniel Dennett used the idea of religion as a meme (or as a set of memes) as a basis for much of his analysis of religion in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Personal and intangible experiences which might seem "above" memes may rather have subconscious roots in memes absorbed during a lifetime, as depth psychology might suggest.

Memetic accounts of science The scientific method offers a body of social and experimental techniques which, given certain preconditions — a free press for the circulation of information, a large number of people prepared to see the universe as a mechanism subject to general regularities which humans can observe, describe and model through repeatable experiments and/or observations — acts highly virulently, spreading quickly through an educated population as journals circulate and blogs proliferate. By demonstrating its success at making predictions, science as a practice can make itself more attractive to potential converts. Whether or not experimenters can necessarily verify them, ideas and attitudes — those which scientists tend to hold or those which feel aesthetically pleasing in combination with scientific discoveries — can propagate themselves in societies where science has a high status by the process of meme piggybacking.

Furthermore, one can view the scientific method as a successful meta-memetical means of selecting those memeplexes best suited for explaining observable physical processes, through its mechanism (parallel to the evolutionary algorithm used in computer science) of providing standardized methods for creating and evaluating competing populations of solutions to a given problem.

Memetic explanations of racism When regarded as non-conscious replicators (much like viruses), individual memes generally lack moral goodness or badness. However, the behaviors that memes generate in individuals and groups can have moral implications. History furnishes many examples of the moral implications of racist/ethnic/class memes when they interact with politics, such as the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Racism provides an example of a common meme: an ideology that has come to separate people, causing the deaths of some targets or practitioners (the latter due to backlash) and threatening the personal life of those who do not conform with racist norms. Once introduced into a culture, memes evolve (note antisemitism as a form of xenophobia) and spread through society, sometimes becoming both harmful and attractive so that they spread like a virus.(Ref.: 1994 G. Burchett)

In Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology,J M Balkin: Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology New Haven : Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 0300072880Jack Balkin argued that memetic processes can explain many of the most familiar features of ideology thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives, networks of cultural associations, metaphoric and metonymy models, and a variety of different mental structures. Some of these structures can help generate racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, by making this kind of belief spread fast and wide. Conversely, some memes can have moral implications that most observers might deem positive, such as the meme of anti-racism, which tends/aims to generate behaviors of tolerance.

Memetic accounts of personality Memeticists often define an individual's mind as a "playground for memes" or as an "ecology of memes", where the different memes that have colonized that mind at different times interact with each other. For example, when a mind successfully infected by the memeplex for religion X becomes exposed to the memeplex for religion Y, memeplex X may repulse memeplex Y: X can block Y from infecting the mind (for instance through use of such memetic components as the meme that "all other religions apart from X are evil").

In a person’s history, language provides the first and most important memetic infection. Indeed, memeticians generally regard language as a memetically-evolved phenomenon. For example, even at the level of animals, many species have evolved particular cries to convey different meanings, such as "danger", "hungry", "aroused", "go away" or "come here". Experiments can verify the memetic nature of the cries of these species, showing for example that the cries do not arise when humans raise the animals concerned: they do not generate the cries by instinct, but learn them from other animals. Human language, as a memetically-evolved tool, can serve not only to communicate concepts between humans, but also to combine low-abstraction concepts into higher-abstraction ones. This combination/abstraction process, seen memetically, constitutes creative breeding of memes, where the interaction of several memes results in the birth of a new, combined meme. For example, the mind of Richard Dawkins saw the creative breeding of its memes for "replicator", "culture", and "mind", and this breeding gave birth to the new meme of "meme".

After humans become infected with the memeplex for language — generally during babyhood — they get infected with a series of higher-abstraction memes, and especially values-memes. Depending on the education received by the person, the lessons drawn from experience, and the surrounding cultural materials (tales, songs, books, etc), a certain ecology and history of meme-infection and interaction builds up within that person’s mind. Memes generate behaviors in their host — either spoken or acted behaviors. Because each person has an individual memetic infection and interaction history, there emerge singular behavior patterns. We conventionally refer to what memeticists regard as meme-generated patterns of behavior as a person's Wiktionary:personality.

Memetic engineering Memetic engineering consists of the process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others. It consists of the process of creating and developing theories or ideology based on an analytical study of society, their ways of thinking and the evolution of the minds that comprise them. Attempts at Artificial Meme-Phrase Creation have not met with noted success, though apocryphal stories tell of the putative origins of these sorts of memes.http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/quiz?view=uk

Sometimes people modify and fabricate memes consciously, even intentionally (think the self-image of advertising agency, for example — though some argue that the intention comes from the memes). This would help to explain how rapidly, extensively and usefully memetic evolution has functioned in and for culture. People apply many ever-evolving meme-based systems of analysis and error-correction to all information flowing in and out. Just as genetic material has developed gene-based error-correction models, memetic systems have "found" it advantageous to associate with meme-based error-correction models.

However, attempting to popularize a fabricated meme or an unproven theory often results in a backlash against said meme: the originators of a meme may appear to have a hidden agenda, as in the case of intelligent design.See for example Mooney, Criss. The Republican War on Science. NY: Basic Books, 2005. Meme-intense societies may generally deride — then forget — such fabricated memes or theories.

Memetic evolution Evolution requires not only inheritance and natural selection but also variation, and memes also exhibit this property. Ideas may undergo changes in transmission which accumulate over time. Generations of hosts pass on these changes in the phenotype (the information in brains or in retention systems). In other words, unlike genetic evolution, memetic evolution can show both Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck traits. For example, folk tales and Mythologys often become embellished in the retelling to make them more memorable or more appropriate and therefore more impressed listeners have a greater likelihood of retelling them, complete with accumulating embellishments that may serve to modify human behavior. More modern examples appear in the various urban legends and hoaxes — such as the Goodtimes virus warning — that circulate on the Internet.

Dawkins observed that cultures can evolve in much the same way that populations of organisms evolve. Various ideas pass from one generation to the next; such ideas may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. This process can affect which of those ideas will survive for passing on to future generations. For example, a certain culture may have unique designs and methods of tool-making that another culture may not have; therefore, the culture with the more effective methods may prosper more than the other culture, ceteris paribus. This leads to a higher proportion of the overall population adopting the more effective methods as time passes. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. Similarly, like the biological evolutionary process, cultures can retain memes that once served a purpose during one epoch or era as vestigial memes — note the survival of astrology. Such evolutionary misdirection resembles (debatably) the survival of the vermiform appendix, or of wisdom teeth in humans.

Propagation of memes Memes have as an important characteristic their propagation through imitation, a concept introduced by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde. Imitation involves copying the observation behaviour of another individual. Typically imitators copy behaviour from observing other humans, but they may also copy from an inanimate source, such as from a book or from a musical score. Imitation may depend on brains sufficiently powerful to assess the key aspects of the imitated behavior (what to copy and why) as well as its potential benefits.

Researchers have observed memetic copying in just a few species on Earth, including Hominidaes, dolphins"Vocal learning in whistle production has been demonstrated in bottlenose dolphins ..." , page 133 — retrieved 2007-08-29.and birds (which learn how to singing by imitating their parentsCompare for example Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye (1988): "Vocal Development", http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Vocal_Development.html).

When imitation first evolved in the animal ancestors of humans, it proved itself a valuable skill for learning, which increased an individual's ability to reproduce genetically. Some have speculated that sexual selection of the best imitators further drove a genetic increase in the ability of brains to imitate well.

Memetics suggests that memes have the potential for a much more lasting effect than genes: humans continue to quote prophets, popes and teachers who had no known lineal blood-descendants. Most organisms pass their genes on to their offspring sexually, but with every generation the genetic contribution of a given ancestor halves — so that a person only has a quarter of their grandfather's personal genes. Susan Blackmore has evaluated the legacy of Socrates. Since the 5th century BC, Socrates' genes have become thoroughly diluted (dispersed); however, his memes still have a profound effect on modern thought and on contemporary philosophy discourse.

In as of 2007, the advent of the Internet — and more specifically of email — has provided memes with a high-fidelity propagation medium that enables highly prolific memes to propagate quickly. For example, chain emails furnish a significant instance: in-depth studies have examined their evolution and mutation based on their differential survival rate. Paper-based chain letters, predecessors to this meme-distribution net, have also attracted study,"Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories", Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma. Scientific American, June 2003. but they have a lower propagation-rate due to the higher copying effort, and a higher mutation-rate may have occurred due to manual transcription or degraded photocopying, thus potentially reducing their lifespan. It seems plausible that the first email chain letters started when recipients transcribed paper-based chain-letters to email, suggesting that memes can move from one propagation medium to another (more efficient) one.

Evolutionary influences on memes If one accepts the memetic description, it still remains to single out which memes have good potential for spreading. One can make an analogy with biology. To be able to say something about the spread of a gene in birds that affect their wings ornithologists need to know about both population genetics and aerodynamics. Similarly, memeticists need to complement the description of memes with a description of what makes a meme easily absorbable by people other than the original carrier.

Only the number of extant copies (and where those copies reside) determine the measurable success of a gene or of a meme. A strong (but not complete) correlation exists between genes that do well and genes that have a positive effect on the organism which contains those genes. And if we can restrict attention to memes normally interpreted as statements of fact, then a correlation emerges between those memes that do well and those that reflect reality. However, some genes and memes do survive which owe their success to other factors. Similarly, a correlation exists between successful memes of a technology/economics nature and those that help the World economy (such as slavery and free markets (each in their day), for instance).

A gene's success in a body may stem from its attempt to bypass the normal sexual lottery by making itself present in more than 50% of zygotes in an organism. Some genes find other ways of having themselves transmitted between cell (biology)s. Hence multiple factors influence the evolution of genes — not just the success of the species as a whole. Similarly the evolutionary pressures on memes include much more than just truth and economic success. Evolutionary pressures may include the following:

Experience: If a meme does not correlate with an individual's experience, then that individual has a reduced likelihood of remembering that meme.

Pleasure/Pain: If a meme results in more pleasure or less pain for its host then the host will have a greater likelihood of remembering it.

Fear/Bribery: If a meme constitutes a threat then people may become fear into believing it. Similarly, if a meme promises some future benefit then people may incline to believe it. The memes "if you do X you will burn in hell" and "do Y and you will go to heaven" provide examples. Memes which pass on the fear of a threat, of the likelihood or effectiveness of a threat, that "something will happen if you do such and such a thing", have a high likelihood of success, and may therefore replicate and remain in the meme-pool. They may assist in this way in the survival of a thought, a theme or a philosophy within a community.

Censorship: If an organisation destroys any retention-systems containing a particular meme or otherwise controls the usage of that meme, then that meme may suffer a selective disadvantage.

Economics: If people or organisations with economic influence exhibit a particular meme, then the meme has a greater likelihood of benefiting from a greater audience. If a meme tends to increase the riches of an individual holding it, then that meme may spread because of imitation. Such memes might include "Hard work is good" and "Put number one first".

Distinction: If the meme enables hearers to recognize and respect tellers (as leaderships, intelligent people, insightful, etc.), then the meme has a greater chance of spreading. The erstwhile receivers will want to become themselves tellers of the same meme (or of an evolved/mutated version). Thus élite knowledge can provide a promotion to élite status.

Memes, like genes, do not purposely do or want anything — they either get replicated or not. Some meme systems have negative effects on the host or on their host society (revenge killings, for example), but humans generally have a symbiotic relationship with these abstract entities.

Memes do not mutate in an exclusively passive way. The brain inhabited by a meme system can carry out a sort of active modification of a meme. One could draw an analogy with a cell's error-correction systems, but they clearly function quite differently. People create and modify memes almost continuously. One can modify, manipulate, and create meme systems in thought, for instance through internal dialogue. As soon as one opens one's mouth and says something (or does something) that one has not copied (but that others can copy), one has unleashed a novel meme. Thus, one could conclude that we all perform the role of a memetic engineer to some degree (even if not consciously).

This seems especially evident in modern society, more notably in the scientific and philosophical realms and in the entertainment industry. It has become standard practice for scientists and philosophers alike to assemble memetic systems and to question their philosophical and empiricism integrity. On perceiving a flaw, one may seek theoretical (mathematical/thought experiments/logic/Scientific method) or empirical (experimental/observational) resolution. This happens in large part due to the influence of some of the more "modern" philosophers of the past. Over the last few hundred (or thousand) years, a "philosophy" or paradigm has evolved and developed which benefits the societies in which many embrace it. That philosophy includes the ethics, moral, and scientific obligation to take nothing for granted and always to question any new information one perceives. People following this tradition have transformed the memetic base of modern science and philosophy. These people include Zoroaster, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Benjamin Franklin and Karl Popper. Science accepts nothing as true unless empirical evidence and observation suggests such "truth" strongly and consistently. This entire procedure adheres to a meme-system that has evolved to the point of rejecting almost any absolute truth-claim. This meme-system now includes such novel analytical paradigms as the scientific method and John Dewey's decision making model (among many other meme-based systems) to help distinguish useful (or truthful) meme-systems from "bad" ones.

Francis Heylighen of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies has postulated what he calls "memetic selection criteria". These criteria opened the way to a specialized field of applied memetics to find out if these selection criteria could stand the test of quantitative analysis.

Cultural materialism holds that the evolutionary pressures of economy and ecology explain many aspects of human culture. For example, the taboo food and drink sometimes enshrined in religions - like the concepts of sacred cows, kosher and halal - would have prospered because they allowed the believing population to (say) live more hygiene and thus survive longer than non-believers in environments possibly more hostile to survival. A migration or a change of the economic infrastructure could render the taboo neutral or even adverse.

Meme-resistance Karl Popper advocated memetic caution in the strongest possible terms: "The survival value of Intelligence (trait) is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."

Resistance to violent and destructive courses of action has formed a common meme that can guide human cultural and cognition evolution away from disastrous paths — for instance the United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stockpiled but did not use nuclear weapons in the Cold War period. Some cultures can consider ignorance a virtue — in particular, ignorance of certain temptations that the culture believes would prove disastrous if pursued by many individuals.

The Internet, perhaps the ultimate meme-vector (biology) to date, seems to host both sides of this debate. Opposition to use of the Internet can stem from any number of memes: from ethics to intent to ability to resist hacker or pornography.

The Principia Cybernetica project maintains a lexicon of memetics concepts, comprising a list of different types of memes. It also refers to an essay by Jaron Lanier, The ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals, which criticises "meme totalists" who assert memes over bodies.

Memetic virus exchange One controversial application of this "selfish meme" parallel results in the idea that certain collections of memes can act as "memetic viruses": collections of ideas that behave in the manner of independent life forms which continue to get passed on — even at the expense of their hosts — simply because of their success at getting passed on. Some observers have suggested that evangelism religions and cults behave in this way; so by including the act of passing on their beliefs as a moral virtue, other beliefs of the religion also get passed along — even if they do not provide particular direct benefits to the believer.

Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas. For example, some religions urge peace and cooperation among their followers ("Thou shalt not murder") which may possibly tend to promote the biological survival of the social groups that carry these memes. However, the idea of group selection stands on shaky ground (to say the least) in the field of genetics. Accordingly, some consider the idea of selection of ideas beneficial to the group exclusively as unlikely.

Dawkins notes that one can distinguish a biological virus from its host's normal genetic material by the fact that it can propagate alone, without the propagation of the entire genetic corpus of the host — or half of it, in the case of diploid sexual reproduction; thus, a virus can "sabotage" the host's other genes. This applies to memes in the sense that a meme that requires the success of its hosts has a greater likelihood of favouring the interests of these hosts than does a meme capable of succeeding even if each host quickly dies. For example, the commonplace meme which encourages people to wash their hands after they use the toilet or before handling food, and which reminds others to do the same, does not appear harmful. In contrast, a meme telling people to quit their jobs, abandon their families, and run around spreading the meme seems quite virulence.

Reproductive isolation in meme "speciation" In traditional population genetics the normal genetic variation, Natural selection#Types of selection, and genetic drift do not lead to the formation of a new species without some form of "reproductive isolation". Thus in order to split a single species into two species, the two subpopulations of the original species must ultimately lose their ability to interbreed, which would normally maintain their heterogeneity. However, once separated, natural selection and/or mere genetic drift acting on the normal genetic variation in the two subspecies will eventually change enough characteristics of the two subgroups to preclude them interbreeding, which (by a common definition of what constitutes a species) means that they will comprise two different species. Examples of reproductive isolation include geographical isolation, where a catastrophism mountain range or river separates two subgroups; temporal isolation (isolation by time), where one subgroup becomes entirely diurnal animal in its habits while the other becomes entirely nocturnal; or even just "behavioral" isolation, as seen in wolf and dog: they could interbreed, biologically speaking, but normally they do not.

A similar phenomenon can occur with memes. Normally, the population of individuals having a meme in their consciousness contains sufficient internal variation and mixes enough to keep a given meme relatively intact (although it covers a wide range of variations). Should that population become split, however, without sufficient contact for the two different subgroups of variations of the meme to Genetic equilibrium, eventually each group will evolve its own version of that meme, each version differing sufficiently from that of the other group to appear as a distinct entity.

The Kellerman meme provides an example of this occurring on the Internet. A search of the web and/or Usenet for the word 'Kellerman' will turn up many citations, describing at great length the behavior of a "Dr. Arthur Kellerman", who, with the willing assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and the public health lobbying, purportedly fabricated studies in order to implicate firearms (and by extension their owners) as a menace to public safety, for the purposes of statism control of the population. The authors of these pages and postings describe purported machinations, "junk science", a subsequent recantation by Dr. "Kellerman", and the use of his work by proponents of gun control.. Compare the work of the differently spelled scientist Arthur Kellermann.

The original meme of Kellermann and his work on gun-related violent injury has generated a new meme ("Dr. Kellerman is an evil lying gun-grabbing enemy of Freedom (political)") by the classic genetic phenomenon of a mutagenesis. The sub-population involved had strongly negative attitudes towards Kellermann's work as well as a lack of firsthand familiarity with his studies and career. Because of the "reproductive isolation" caused by the total non-intersection of the results of searches for "Kellerman" and "Kellermann", the Kellerman-meme drifted even further in th



A meme, () as defined within memetics theory, comprises a theoretical unit of culture information, the building block of Sociocultural evolution or cultural diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogyly to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetics information and of biological evolution.*Lasn, Kalle (2000) Culture jam. New York: Quill. p.123 Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes).

Biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976.Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 11. Memes:the new replicators, Oxford University, 1976, second edition, December 1989, ISBN 0-19-217773-7; April 1992, ISBN 0-19-857519-X; trade paperback, September 1990, ISBN 0-19-286092-5 He gave as examples tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothing fashions, ways of making pots, and the technology of building arches.

Meme theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection similarly to Charles Darwin biology evolution through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and Biological inheritance influencing an organism's reproductive success. So with memes, some ideas will propagate less successfully and become extinction, while others will survive, spread, and, for better or for worse, mutation. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."{{cite book |author=Kelly, Kevin |title=Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world |publisher=Addison-Wesley |location=Boston |year=1994 |pages=360 |isbn=0-201-48340-8 |oclc= |doi=-->

"But if we consider culture as its own self organizing system,- a system with its own agenda and pressure to survive- then the history of humanity gets even more interesting. As Richard Dawkins has shown, systems of self-replicating ideas or memes can quickly accumulate their own agenda and behaviours. I assign no higher motive to a cultural entity than the primitive drive to reproduce itself and modify its environment to aid its spread. One way the self organizing system can do this is by consuming human biological resources.""In Danny Hillis's terminology, civilized humans are 'the world's most successful symbionts' — culture and biology behaving as mutually beneficial parasites for each other."

A short story written in 1876 by Mark Twain, A Literary Nightmare, describes his encounter with a jingle so "catchy" that it plays over and over in his mind until he finally sings it out loud and infects others (also known as an earworm).

Origins and concepts first introduced the meme concept.

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, which first came into popular use with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene". The concept received relatively little attention until the late 1980s, when several academics took it up, notably the American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett, who promoted the idea firstly in his book on the philosophy of mind, Consciousness Explained (1991), and then in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). Robert Anton Wilson also discussed the concept in his writings.

Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity (such as a song, an idea or a religion) that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for an hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.

Considerable controversy surrounds the word meme and its associated field, memetics, is not accepted as an academic discipline. In part this arises because a number of possible (though not mutually exclusive) interpretations of the nature of the concept have arisen:

The least controversial claim suggests that memes provide a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's eye view — as if memes, or the people who carry them, acted to maximise their own replication and survival — can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Dawkins himself seems to have favoured this approach.

Other theorists, such as Francis Heylighen, have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics in order for people to regard it as a real and useful scientific discipline. Given the nebulous (and in many cases subjective) nature of many memes, providing such an empirical grounding has to date proved challenging. However, a recent study by Mikael Sandberg, further elaborates the memetic approach to empirical studies of innovation diffusion in organisations. "The Evolution of IT Innovations in Swedish Organizations: A Darwinian Critique of ‘Lamarckian’ Institutional Economics", Journal of Evolutionary Economics (on-line 2006, in print 2007)

A third approach, exemplified by Dennett and by Susan Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine (1999), seeks to place memes at the centre of a radical and counter-intuitive naturalism (philosophy) theory of mind and of personal identity (philosophy). Evan Louis Sheehan uses the hierarchical model of cerebral cortex architecture proposed by Jeff Hawkins to develop such a memetic theory of mind in his book The Mocking Memes: A Basis for Automated Intelligence.

Etymology Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, meaning "memory"), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as "Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings"). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word mneme appears in English (language) in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.

According to Dawkins, who coined the word "meme" without knowing about mnemes, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos, "mimic"). Dawkins said he wanted "a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like gene".Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, USA; 3rd edition, April 24, 2006, ISBN 0-1992-9114-4), p. 192.

To quote Dawkins more extensively:

Dawkins' genetic analogy Richard Dawkins introduced the term after writing that evolution depended not on the particular molecular genetics of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replication unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought might prove useful in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

This analogy suggests that the definition of a meme should refer to the physical structure, or abstract code representing that structure, representing a real idea as observed in situ. Genes do not depend upon their transfer for their current existence; they may need a definite, although not necessarily unique physical structure. Similarly, a book, play, song, or computer file might replicate a meme.

William H. Calvin offers the concept of a Darwinian process in the generation of conscious thought, based on his theory of resonant electrochemistry in the neocortex.

Dawkins himself, in a speech on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Selfish Gene, described his motivation for postulating memes: he portrayed the idea not so much as an attempt at creating an account for cultural complexity, but rather as seeking something with which the selfish-genetic mechanism would still work with unreliable replicators:

Memes as discrete units Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", memeticists in general promote varying definitions of the concept of the meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics.

Although memeticists speak of memes as discrete units, this need not imply that thoughts somehow become quantized or that "atomic" ideas exist which one cannot break down into smaller pieces. The meme as a unit simply provides a convenient way of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word was first uttered. The "word itself" meme will most likely survive many more generations (after transmission alone or in other sentences) than the "speech in its entirety" meme will survive (due to errors of memory, abridged versions, etc.)

This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a self-replicating set of code. The gene in this definition does not consist of a set number of nucleotides, but simply a collection of nucleotides (possibly in many different locations on the Deoxyribonucleic acid) that replicate together and code for some set of behaviors or body parts.

In 1981 biologists Charles J. Lumsden and Edward Osborne Wilson published a theory of gene/culture co-evolution in the book Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process. They argued that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic memory. Wilson later adopted the term meme as the best existing name for the fundamental unit of cultural inheritance and elaborated upon the fundamental role of memes in unifying the Natural science and social sciences in his book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

Memeplexes Much of the study of memes focuses on groups of memes called memeplexes (also known as meme complexes or as memecomplexes) — such as religious, cultural, or political doctrines and systems. Memeplexes contain mutually supportive memes that together become more evolutionarily successful. These memeplexes may also play a part in the acceptance of new memes which, if they fit with a memeplex, can "piggyback" on that success. Memeplexes of religion provide a commonly-cited example. In the case of Christianity, the theory suggests, the Christian memeplex evolved from Jewish religious teachings to form, among others, the Catholic church.For discussion and relevant references on the Jewish origins of Christianity, see Origins of Christianity.Following the East-West Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and later Protestant Reformation giving rise to various Protestant churches, various people have added and deleted individual memes, resulting in the formation of completely different memeplexes (religions/sects) within the basic umbrella of Christianity,For a generalized account of the origins and historical development of religious sects, see the Max Weberian account of church-sect typology.as well as within (for example) the Catholic,Note the existence of the Old Catholic Church, for example; and arguably Anglo-Catholicism.Orthodox,Numerous examples of and references to many sects of just the Russian Orthodox tradition appear in the article on Old Believers.and Protestant traditions.The article on Protestantism provides an overview of major sub-groups within the Protestant fold.(Without some concept of cultural evolution, one might have to postulate repeated and contradictory divine/demonic revelations in order to account for the development of religion and for the existence of Christian denominations.)

Transmission Life forms transmit information vertically (from generation to generation) via replication of genes. Memes can also transmit information vertically by replication. Some life forms can spread from their host horizontally, within groups of contemporaries. Memes also spread from hosts in such a manner. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time: Copernicus re-discovered the ancient heliocentric views of Aristarchus of Samos, but Aristarchian memes survive. One may view memeplexes as assisting the survival and transmission of memes in a symbiotic relationship.

Memes spread by the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. For example, the fashion-value that "less is more" spreads through the behavior of people dressing down in understated clothes and acting superior. This behavior then has the effect of showing others a real-life example of this fashion-value, thereby conveying to them the fashion statement that "less is more". Verbal transmission can supplement or replace this imitative method.

Those interested in tracking how memes spread through culture may use memetrackers, websites that allow one to see how people receive, use, and spread new information on the World Wide Web. Cameron Marlowe's Blogdex project pioneered research on this topic.

Memetics Memetics, the study of memes, remains a controversial field among many scientists and skeptics. Memetics originated when Richard Dawkins reduced the process of biological genetic evolution to its most fundamental unit: the replicator (or gene). Dawkins, in a search for parallels and other things that he might classify as replicators, suggested that the information and ideas in brains — culture, for example — could function as replicators as well. Computer software may represent another form of replicator with which evolution may eventually build grand things, whether socially as in the open source movement, or through the use of evolutionary algorithms.

Memetics offers maximum explanatory value in cases where one cannot demonstrate the truth of the contents of the meme. For example, one can readily show that washing hands helps to prevent illness, so the best explanation for the widespread popularity of this practice is that "it works", though memetics still helps explain the rate of spread, and details such as why the practice of washing hands before surgery took so long to catch on. Memetics, however, excels in explaining the spread of certain value-judgements ("chastity is important"), preferences ("pork is repulsive"), superstitions ("black cats bring bad luck") and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs ("'X' is the one true God"); since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena by conventional scientific methods. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a "meme", therefore, does not constitute an insult, but dismissing it as "just a meme" does. Calling a belief a meme does not constitute an insult in that most people who believe in memes regard all beliefs as memes anyway.

Memetic methodology Memetics often takes concepts from the theory of evolution (especially population genetics) and applies them to human culture. Memetics also uses mathematical models to try to explain many very controversial subjects such as religion and political systems. Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in the fields (such as sociology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, etc.) most relevant to the claims and methodologies of memetics.

Memeticists generate much memetic terminology by prepending 'mem(e)-' to an existing, usually biological, term or by putting 'mem(e)' in place of 'gen(e)' in various terms. Examples include: meme pool, memotype, memetic engineer, meme-complex.

Some concepts of memetics The term memetic association refers to the idea that memes herding behavior. For example, a meme for blue jeans includes memes for trouser-flies, riveted clothing, blue dye, cotton clothing, belt (clothing)-loops and double-sewn seams. In this way, groups of memes can operate symbiosis (to use a biological analogy) in the sense that they act for their mutual benefit/survival.

The phrase memetic drift (formed by analogy to genetic drift) refers to the process of a meme changing as it replicates between one person to another. Memetic drift increases when meme transmission occurs with variations. Very few memes show strong memetic inertia (the characteristic of a meme to manifest in the same way and to have the same impact regardless of who receives or transmits the meme). Memetic inertia increases when the meme transfers along with mnemonic devices, such as a rhyme, to preserve the memory of the meme prior to its transmission. See Telephone (game) for one example of memetic drift.

Doubts about memetics A basic difficulty in the study of memes involves the frequent lack of clarity as to what divides one meme from another. Whether this matters may remain a matter of taste.

In much the same way that the selfish gene concept offers a way of understanding and reasoning about aspects of biological evolution, the meme concept can conceivably assist in the better understanding of some otherwise puzzling aspects of human culture (and learned behaviors of other animals as well). However, if one cannot test for "better" empirically, the question will remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a philosophy of science scientific theory. Memetics thus remains a science in its infancy, a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to detractors.

Another objection to the study of the evolution of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves the fact that the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection pressures being neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation rates. There seems no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes.Kim Sterelney and Paul E. Griffiths, Sex and Death: And Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p.333

Applications of memetics Memetic accounts of religion Memetics regards religion itself as memetic, and Richard Dawkins has often discussed religion.

Some fundamentalist evangelism religious movements act predominantly to swell the reach of their faith-meme. These movements devote a large amount of time to evangelical activity.

Many of the world's most successful religions demonstrate memetic modification over time — the theologies of the 21st century differ to a greater or lesser extent from the theologies of previous centuries.See History of theology for accounts of the varying emphases and interests of theologians in various traditions over time.Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Mormonism (and their descendants) have all developed through variation, modification and memetic recombination from a shared monotheism meme: Zoroastrianism appears to have functioned as an important and widely-shared religious ancestor (see Lawrence Mills, Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia, Chicago, 1913), contributing through Judaism to Christianity, Islam and their many derivative religions. See for example the discussion and quotations in http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/influenc.htm

The religious right in the United States of America attaches conservative political views to Christian religious evangelism ("meme piggybacking"), and fundamentalist Christianity has associated a particular set of politico-social ideas/memeplexes with a separate set of religious ideas/memeplexes that have "replicated" very effectively for many centuries. For other examples of piggybacking involving religious memes, note the conversion-histories of the Kingdom of Hungarys and of Kievan Rus': adoption of Catholicism and Orthodoxy respectively entailed perceived cultural, political and diplomatic benefits and adherence to perceived mainstream civilization.Compare for example the discussion in the article Christianization of Kievan Rus'.

In Western world, universities evolved from medieval religious institutions devoted to learning. Of the nine colonial colleges in the British colonies of North America, eight had affiliations with religious institutions. Many US colleges separated themselves from their seminaries, because the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents federal funding of religious organizations. One can think of American academia as an offshoot religion that eliminated less adaptive memes (beliefs in the supernatural) in response to a selective pressure (funding restrictions).

A tendency exists in memetics to disparage religious memes, beginning at least as early as Dawkins's openly-expressed atheism. Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006) calls all religious memes "mind viruses". Author Neal Stephenson speculates that traditional religions act as mental immune systems to suppress new (and potentially harmful) memes.Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash.Bantam Books 1992. ISBN 0-553-08853-X Some compare this process to a scenario where the action of a virus (here a religion or a "bundle" of religious memes) proves ineffective and maladaptive if it kills its host(s), or to where the presence of less-harmful bacteria on the skin prevent infection by more-harmful organisms. For example, popular Christianity forbids both murder and suicide, and its precise definitions of Christian heresy ensure that properly-educated Christians have difficulty in accepting new religions or new viewpoints which advocate such actions.

Susan Blackmore has made a case that the study of Zen meditation in itself comprises a process of meme "pruning", i.e., a means to remove experiential clichés that reduce the value of life. This has not exempted Zen itself from serving as a source of highly mobile memes, such as "the sound of one hand clapping" koan or exclaiming "Mu (negative)". please review this statementit is not clear at all

Daniel Dennett used the idea of religion as a meme (or as a set of memes) as a basis for much of his analysis of religion in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Personal and intangible experiences which might seem "above" memes may rather have subconscious roots in memes absorbed during a lifetime, as depth psychology might suggest.

Memetic accounts of science The scientific method offers a body of social and experimental techniques which, given certain preconditions — a free press for the circulation of information, a large number of people prepared to see the universe as a mechanism subject to general regularities which humans can observe, describe and model through repeatable experiments and/or observations — acts highly virulently, spreading quickly through an educated population as journals circulate and blogs proliferate. By demonstrating its success at making predictions, science as a practice can make itself more attractive to potential converts. Whether or not experimenters can necessarily verify them, ideas and attitudes — those which scientists tend to hold or those which feel aesthetically pleasing in combination with scientific discoveries — can propagate themselves in societies where science has a high status by the process of meme piggybacking.

Furthermore, one can view the scientific method as a successful meta-memetical means of selecting those memeplexes best suited for explaining observable physical processes, through its mechanism (parallel to the evolutionary algorithm used in computer science) of providing standardized methods for creating and evaluating competing populations of solutions to a given problem.

Memetic explanations of racism When regarded as non-conscious replicators (much like viruses), individual memes generally lack moral goodness or badness. However, the behaviors that memes generate in individuals and groups can have moral implications. History furnishes many examples of the moral implications of racist/ethnic/class memes when they interact with politics, such as the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Racism provides an example of a common meme: an ideology that has come to separate people, causing the deaths of some targets or practitioners (the latter due to backlash) and threatening the personal life of those who do not conform with racist norms. Once introduced into a culture, memes evolve (note antisemitism as a form of xenophobia) and spread through society, sometimes becoming both harmful and attractive so that they spread like a virus.(Ref.: 1994 G. Burchett)

In Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology,J M Balkin: Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology New Haven : Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 0300072880Jack Balkin argued that memetic processes can explain many of the most familiar features of ideology thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives, networks of cultural associations, metaphoric and metonymy models, and a variety of different mental structures. Some of these structures can help generate racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, by making this kind of belief spread fast and wide. Conversely, some memes can have moral implications that most observers might deem positive, such as the meme of anti-racism, which tends/aims to generate behaviors of tolerance.

Memetic accounts of personality Memeticists often define an individual's mind as a "playground for memes" or as an "ecology of memes", where the different memes that have colonized that mind at different times interact with each other. For example, when a mind successfully infected by the memeplex for religion X becomes exposed to the memeplex for religion Y, memeplex X may repulse memeplex Y: X can block Y from infecting the mind (for instance through use of such memetic components as the meme that "all other religions apart from X are evil").

In a person’s history, language provides the first and most important memetic infection. Indeed, memeticians generally regard language as a memetically-evolved phenomenon. For example, even at the level of animals, many species have evolved particular cries to convey different meanings, such as "danger", "hungry", "aroused", "go away" or "come here". Experiments can verify the memetic nature of the cries of these species, showing for example that the cries do not arise when humans raise the animals concerned: they do not generate the cries by instinct, but learn them from other animals. Human language, as a memetically-evolved tool, can serve not only to communicate concepts between humans, but also to combine low-abstraction concepts into higher-abstraction ones. This combination/abstraction process, seen memetically, constitutes creative breeding of memes, where the interaction of several memes results in the birth of a new, combined meme. For example, the mind of Richard Dawkins saw the creative breeding of its memes for "replicator", "culture", and "mind", and this breeding gave birth to the new meme of "meme".

After humans become infected with the memeplex for language — generally during babyhood — they get infected with a series of higher-abstraction memes, and especially values-memes. Depending on the education received by the person, the lessons drawn from experience, and the surrounding cultural materials (tales, songs, books, etc), a certain ecology and history of meme-infection and interaction builds up within that person’s mind. Memes generate behaviors in their host — either spoken or acted behaviors. Because each person has an individual memetic infection and interaction history, there emerge singular behavior patterns. We conventionally refer to what memeticists regard as meme-generated patterns of behavior as a person's Wiktionary:personality.

Memetic engineering Memetic engineering consists of the process of developing memes, through meme-splicing and memetic synthesis, with the intent of altering the behavior of others. It consists of the process of creating and developing theories or ideology based on an analytical study of society, their ways of thinking and the evolution of the minds that comprise them. Attempts at Artificial Meme-Phrase Creation have not met with noted success, though apocryphal stories tell of the putative origins of these sorts of memes.http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwordorigins/quiz?view=uk

Sometimes people modify and fabricate memes consciously, even intentionally (think the self-image of advertising agency, for example — though some argue that the intention comes from the memes). This would help to explain how rapidly, extensively and usefully memetic evolution has functioned in and for culture. People apply many ever-evolving meme-based systems of analysis and error-correction to all information flowing in and out. Just as genetic material has developed gene-based error-correction models, memetic systems have "found" it advantageous to associate with meme-based error-correction models.

However, attempting to popularize a fabricated meme or an unproven theory often results in a backlash against said meme: the originators of a meme may appear to have a hidden agenda, as in the case of intelligent design.See for example Mooney, Criss. The Republican War on Science. NY: Basic Books, 2005. Meme-intense societies may generally deride — then forget — such fabricated memes or theories.

Memetic evolution Evolution requires not only inheritance and natural selection but also variation, and memes also exhibit this property. Ideas may undergo changes in transmission which accumulate over time. Generations of hosts pass on these changes in the phenotype (the information in brains or in retention systems). In other words, unlike genetic evolution, memetic evolution can show both Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck traits. For example, folk tales and Mythologys often become embellished in the retelling to make them more memorable or more appropriate and therefore more impressed listeners have a greater likelihood of retelling them, complete with accumulating embellishments that may serve to modify human behavior. More modern examples appear in the various urban legends and hoaxes — such as the Goodtimes virus warning — that circulate on the Internet.

Dawkins observed that cultures can evolve in much the same way that populations of organisms evolve. Various ideas pass from one generation to the next; such ideas may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. This process can affect which of those ideas will survive for passing on to future generations. For example, a certain culture may have unique designs and methods of tool-making that another culture may not have; therefore, the culture with the more effective methods may prosper more than the other culture, ceteris paribus. This leads to a higher proportion of the overall population adopting the more effective methods as time passes. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. Similarly, like the biological evolutionary process, cultures can retain memes that once served a purpose during one epoch or era as vestigial memes — note the survival of astrology. Such evolutionary misdirection resembles (debatably) the survival of the vermiform appendix, or of wisdom teeth in humans.

Propagation of memes Memes have as an important characteristic their propagation through imitation, a concept introduced by the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde. Imitation involves copying the observation behaviour of another individual. Typically imitators copy behaviour from observing other humans, but they may also copy from an inanimate source, such as from a book or from a musical score. Imitation may depend on brains sufficiently powerful to assess the key aspects of the imitated behavior (what to copy and why) as well as its potential benefits.

Researchers have observed memetic copying in just a few species on Earth, including Hominidaes, dolphins"Vocal learning in whistle production has been demonstrated in bottlenose dolphins ..." , page 133 — retrieved 2007-08-29.and birds (which learn how to singing by imitating their parentsCompare for example Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin, and Darryl Wheye (1988): "Vocal Development", http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Vocal_Development.html).

When imitation first evolved in the animal ancestors of humans, it proved itself a valuable skill for learning, which increased an individual's ability to reproduce genetically. Some have speculated that sexual selection of the best imitators further drove a genetic increase in the ability of brains to imitate well.

Memetics suggests that memes have the potential for a much more lasting effect than genes: humans continue to quote prophets, popes and teachers who had no known lineal blood-descendants. Most organisms pass their genes on to their offspring sexually, but with every generation the genetic contribution of a given ancestor halves — so that a person only has a quarter of their grandfather's personal genes. Susan Blackmore has evaluated the legacy of Socrates. Since the 5th century BC, Socrates' genes have become thoroughly diluted (dispersed); however, his memes still have a profound effect on modern thought and on contemporary philosophy discourse.

In as of 2007, the advent of the Internet — and more specifically of email — has provided memes with a high-fidelity propagation medium that enables highly prolific memes to propagate quickly. For example, chain emails furnish a significant instance: in-depth studies have examined their evolution and mutation based on their differential survival rate. Paper-based chain letters, predecessors to this meme-distribution net, have also attracted study,"Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories", Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma. Scientific American, June 2003. but they have a lower propagation-rate due to the higher copying effort, and a higher mutation-rate may have occurred due to manual transcription or degraded photocopying, thus potentially reducing their lifespan. It seems plausible that the first email chain letters started when recipients transcribed paper-based chain-letters to email, suggesting that memes can move from one propagation medium to another (more efficient) one.

Evolutionary influences on memes If one accepts the memetic description, it still remains to single out which memes have good potential for spreading. One can make an analogy with biology. To be able to say something about the spread of a gene in birds that affect their wings ornithologists need to know about both population genetics and aerodynamics. Similarly, memeticists need to complement the description of memes with a description of what makes a meme easily absorbable by people other than the original carrier.

Only the number of extant copies (and where those copies reside) determine the measurable success of a gene or of a meme. A strong (but not complete) correlation exists between genes that do well and genes that have a positive effect on the organism which contains those genes. And if we can restrict attention to memes normally interpreted as statements of fact, then a correlation emerges between those memes that do well and those that reflect reality. However, some genes and memes do survive which owe their success to other factors. Similarly, a correlation exists between successful memes of a technology/economics nature and those that help the World economy (such as slavery and free markets (each in their day), for instance).

A gene's success in a body may stem from its attempt to bypass the normal sexual lottery by making itself present in more than 50% of zygotes in an organism. Some genes find other ways of having themselves transmitted between cell (biology)s. Hence multiple factors influence the evolution of genes — not just the success of the species as a whole. Similarly the evolutionary pressures on memes include much more than just truth and economic success. Evolutionary pressures may include the following:

Experience: If a meme does not correlate with an individual's experience, then that individual has a reduced likelihood of remembering that meme.

Pleasure/Pain: If a meme results in more pleasure or less pain for its host then the host will have a greater likelihood of remembering it.

Fear/Bribery: If a meme constitutes a threat then people may become fear into believing it. Similarly, if a meme promises some future benefit then people may incline to believe it. The memes "if you do X you will burn in hell" and "do Y and you will go to heaven" provide examples. Memes which pass on the fear of a threat, of the likelihood or effectiveness of a threat, that "something will happen if you do such and such a thing", have a high likelihood of success, and may therefore replicate and remain in the meme-pool. They may assist in this way in the survival of a thought, a theme or a philosophy within a community.

Censorship: If an organisation destroys any retention-systems containing a particular meme or otherwise controls the usage of that meme, then that meme may suffer a selective disadvantage.

Economics: If people or organisations with economic influence exhibit a particular meme, then the meme has a greater likelihood of benefiting from a greater audience. If a meme tends to increase the riches of an individual holding it, then that meme may spread because of imitation. Such memes might include "Hard work is good" and "Put number one first".

Distinction: If the meme enables hearers to recognize and respect tellers (as leaderships, intelligent people, insightful, etc.), then the meme has a greater chance of spreading. The erstwhile receivers will want to become themselves tellers of the same meme (or of an evolved/mutated version). Thus élite knowledge can provide a promotion to élite status.

Memes, like genes, do not purposely do or want anything — they either get replicated or not. Some meme systems have negative effects on the host or on their host society (revenge killings, for example), but humans generally have a symbiotic relationship with these abstract entities.

Memes do not mutate in an exclusively passive way. The brain inhabited by a meme system can carry out a sort of active modification of a meme. One could draw an analogy with a cell's error-correction systems, but they clearly function quite differently. People create and modify memes almost continuously. One can modify, manipulate, and create meme systems in thought, for instance through internal dialogue. As soon as one opens one's mouth and says something (or does something) that one has not copied (but that others can copy), one has unleashed a novel meme. Thus, one could conclude that we all perform the role of a memetic engineer to some degree (even if not consciously).

This seems especially evident in modern society, more notably in the scientific and philosophical realms and in the entertainment industry. It has become standard practice for scientists and philosophers alike to assemble memetic systems and to question their philosophical and empiricism integrity. On perceiving a flaw, one may seek theoretical (mathematical/thought experiments/logic/Scientific method) or empirical (experimental/observational) resolution. This happens in large part due to the influence of some of the more "modern" philosophers of the past. Over the last few hundred (or thousand) years, a "philosophy" or paradigm has evolved and developed which benefits the societies in which many embrace it. That philosophy includes the ethics, moral, and scientific obligation to take nothing for granted and always to question any new information one perceives. People following this tradition have transformed the memetic base of modern science and philosophy. These people include Zoroaster, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Benjamin Franklin and Karl Popper. Science accepts nothing as true unless empirical evidence and observation suggests such "truth" strongly and consistently. This entire procedure adheres to a meme-system that has evolved to the point of rejecting almost any absolute truth-claim. This meme-system now includes such novel analytical paradigms as the scientific method and John Dewey's decision making model (among many other meme-based systems) to help distinguish useful (or truthful) meme-systems from "bad" ones.

Francis Heylighen of the Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies has postulated what he calls "memetic selection criteria". These criteria opened the way to a specialized field of applied memetics to find out if these selection criteria could stand the test of quantitative analysis.

Cultural materialism holds that the evolutionary pressures of economy and ecology explain many aspects of human culture. For example, the taboo food and drink sometimes enshrined in religions - like the concepts of sacred cows, kosher and halal - would have prospered because they allowed the believing population to (say) live more hygiene and thus survive longer than non-believers in environments possibly more hostile to survival. A migration or a change of the economic infrastructure could render the taboo neutral or even adverse.

Meme-resistance Karl Popper advocated memetic caution in the strongest possible terms: "The survival value of Intelligence (trait) is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."

Resistance to violent and destructive courses of action has formed a common meme that can guide human cultural and cognition evolution away from disastrous paths — for instance the United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics stockpiled but did not use nuclear weapons in the Cold War period. Some cultures can consider ignorance a virtue — in particular, ignorance of certain temptations that the culture believes would prove disastrous if pursued by many individuals.

The Internet, perhaps the ultimate meme-vector (biology) to date, seems to host both sides of this debate. Opposition to use of the Internet can stem from any number of memes: from ethics to intent to ability to resist hacker or pornography.

The Principia Cybernetica project maintains a lexicon of memetics concepts, comprising a list of different types of memes. It also refers to an essay by Jaron Lanier, The ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals, which criticises "meme totalists" who assert memes over bodies.

Memetic virus exchange One controversial application of this "selfish meme" parallel results in the idea that certain collections of memes can act as "memetic viruses": collections of ideas that behave in the manner of independent life forms which continue to get passed on — even at the expense of their hosts — simply because of their success at getting passed on. Some observers have suggested that evangelism religions and cults behave in this way; so by including the act of passing on their beliefs as a moral virtue, other beliefs of the religion also get passed along — even if they do not provide particular direct benefits to the believer.

Others maintain that the wide prevalence of human adoption of religious ideas provides evidence to suggest that such ideas offer some ecological, sexual, ethical or moral value; otherwise memetic evolution would long ago have selected against such ideas. For example, some religions urge peace and cooperation among their followers ("Thou shalt not murder") which may possibly tend to promote the biological survival of the social groups that carry these memes. However, the idea of group selection stands on shaky ground (to say the least) in the field of genetics. Accordingly, some consider the idea of selection of ideas beneficial to the group exclusively as unlikely.

Dawkins notes that one can distinguish a biological virus from its host's normal genetic material by the fact that it can propagate alone, without the propagation of the entire genetic corpus of the host — or half of it, in the case of diploid sexual reproduction; thus, a virus can "sabotage" the host's other genes. This applies to memes in the sense that a meme that requires the success of its hosts has a greater likelihood of favouring the interests of these hosts than does a meme capable of succeeding even if each host quickly dies. For example, the commonplace meme which encourages people to wash their hands after they use the toilet or before handling food, and which reminds others to do the same, does not appear harmful. In contrast, a meme telling people to quit their jobs, abandon their families, and run around spreading the meme seems quite virulence.

Reproductive isolation in meme "speciation" In traditional population genetics the normal genetic variation, Natural selection#Types of selection, and genetic drift do not lead to the formation of a new species without some form of "reproductive isolation". Thus in order to split a single species into two species, the two subpopulations of the original species must ultimately lose their ability to interbreed, which would normally maintain their heterogeneity. However, once separated, natural selection and/or mere genetic drift acting on the normal genetic variation in the two subspecies will eventually change enough characteristics of the two subgroups to preclude them interbreeding, which (by a common definition of what constitutes a species) means that they will comprise two different species. Examples of reproductive isolation include geographical isolation, where a catastrophism mountain range or river separates two subgroups; temporal isolation (isolation by time), where one subgroup becomes entirely diurnal animal in its habits while the other becomes entirely nocturnal; or even just "behavioral" isolation, as seen in wolf and dog: they could interbreed, biologically speaking, but normally they do not.

A similar phenomenon can occur with memes. Normally, the population of individuals having a meme in their consciousness contains sufficient internal variation and mixes enough to keep a given meme relatively intact (although it covers a wide range of variations). Should that population become split, however, without sufficient contact for the two different subgroups of variations of the meme to Genetic equilibrium, eventually each group will evolve its own version of that meme, each version differing sufficiently from that of the other group to appear as a distinct entity.

The Kellerman meme provides an example of this occurring on the Internet. A search of the web and/or Usenet for the word 'Kellerman' will turn up many citations, describing at great length the behavior of a "Dr. Arthur Kellerman", who, with the willing assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and the public health lobbying, purportedly fabricated studies in order to implicate firearms (and by extension their owners) as a menace to public safety, for the purposes of statism control of the population. The authors of these pages and postings describe purported machinations, "junk science", a subsequent recantation by Dr. "Kellerman", and the use of his work by proponents of gun control.. Compare the work of the differently spelled scientist Arthur Kellermann.

The original meme of Kellermann and his work on gun-related violent injury has generated a new meme ("Dr. Kellerman is an evil lying gun-grabbing enemy of Freedom (political)") by the classic genetic phenomenon of a mutagenesis. The sub-population involved had strongly negative attitudes towards Kellermann's work as well as a lack of firsthand familiarity with his studies and career. Because of the "reproductive isolation" caused by the total non-intersection of the results of searches for "Kellerman" and "Kellermann", the Kellerman-meme drifted even further in th

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