Scientists singing their own "la-la" song

"For over a hundred years, most social scientists have refused to face the Darwinian music - preferring instead to put their fingers in their ears and sing their own 'la-la' song." (Tyler 2011, Memetics, p. 17)

A Memetics Compendium

"Consider mobile phones. The typical sociobiology perspective pictures humans using phones to promote their own ends, with the employees and bosses at the phone company using the technology to promote their own ends. The meme's eye view of this set-up looks rather different: the memes are using the human bodies of the users as sophisticated data-capturing devices and world manipulators. Giving on-screen instructions to humans allows the memes to take advantage of sophisticated actuators made using molecular nanotechnology, while cameras, microphones and keyboards allow for data input. The data is then fed to a server-side computer system, which acts like a large and sophisticated brain which manages the entire set-up. The whole system is arranged so as to promote and perpetuate the mobile phone company's memes - at the expense of the memes of its competitors." (Tim Tyler)

(A Memetics Compendium, compiled by Robert Finkelstein)

Genes, memes and temes?

(source: Tim Tyler's http://on-memetics.blogspot.nl/)

The Extended Phemotype

"An animal's behaviour tends to maximize the survival of the genes 'for' that behaviour, whether or not those genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.
  And how far afield can the phenotype extend? Is there any limit to action at a distance, a sharp cut-off, an inverse square law? The farthest action at a distance I think of is a matter of several miles. Why not hundreds of miles, thousands of miles? The logic of the extended phenotype might seem to favour the idea, but I think in practice it is unlikely." (Dawkins 1982, The Extended Phenotype, p. 233)

Het is volgens Dawkins niet aannemelijk dat de afstand tussen een bepaald fenotypisch kenmerk en de genen die het programmeerden, ooit verder reiken zal dan enkele kilometers. Toch maken wij mensen bijvoorbeeld satellieten. Deze zweven op een hoogte van 36.000 kilometer boven de evenaar. Analoog aan spinnenwebben, vogelnesten en beverdammen, maken deze kunstmanen onmiskenbaar deel uit van ons extended phenotype. Hoe zit dat? Is Dawkins' intuïtie met dit simpele voorbeeld weerlegd?

Misschien niet. Er is bij een satelliet namelijk iets anders aan de hand dan bij een spinnenweb. Een spin bouwt instinctmatig zijn web. De kunst dit te toen ligt genetisch verankerd in zijn DNA. Bij de mens is dat, met betrekking tot de techniek, niet het geval. Geen wolfskind bouwde ooit eigenhandig een satelliet. Om een satelliet te kunnen bouwen is er kennis nodig die niet genetisch maar cultureel overgedragen wordt. Het verschil tussen een spinnenweb en een satelliet is zodoende dat de eerste de resultante is van een genetische aansturing, terwijl de tweede dat veeleer van een memetische is. Voor culturele artefacten à la satellieten reserveert Blackmore om die reden een aparte term: meme-phenotype ofwel phemotype (Blackmore 1999, The Meme Machine, p. 63).

Dat Dawkins' intuïtie uit The Extended Phenotype met een simpel voorbeeld als een satelliet te weerleggen is, is dus niet direct evident. Memen hebben wellicht een grotere fenotypische reikwijdte dan genen. In dat geval biedt deze overdenking mogelijk voer voor een nieuw boek: The Extended Phemotype: The (even) Long(er) Reach of the Meme.

The Meme Machine

"We once thought that biological design needed a creator, but we now know that natural selection can do all the designing on its own. Similarly, we once thought that human design required a conscious designer inside us, but we now know that memetic selection can do it on its own. We once thought that design required foresight and a plan, but we now know that natural selection can build creatures that look as though they were built to plan when in fact there was none. If we take memetics seriously there is no room for anyone or anything to jump into the evolutionary process and stop it, direct it, or do anything to it. There is just the evolutionary process of genes and memes playing itself endlessly out - and no one watching."
(Blackmore 1999, The Meme Machine, p. 242)

“Die Sprache spricht, nicht der Mensch. Der Mensch spricht nur, indem er geschicklich der Sprache entspricht.”
(Heidegger 1956, Der Satz vom Grund, p. 161)

Memetics

“Memes are clusters of ideas and beliefs, which are supposed to compete with one another in much the same way that genes do. In the life of the mind, as in biological evolution, there is a kind of natural selection of memes, whereby the fittest memes survive. Unfortunately, memes are not genes. There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.”

(John Gray 2002, Straw Dogs, p. 26)

“The prospects for elaborating a rigorous science of memetics are doubtful, but the concept provides a valuable perspective from which to investigate the complex relationship between cultural and genetic heritage.”

(Daniel Dennett 1995, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, p. 369)

“Memes have not yet found their Watson and Crick; they even lack their Mendel.”

(Richard Dawkins in Susan Blackmore 1999, The Meme Machine, p. xii)

Dr. Watson, I presume?

“There certainly are memes to be found that form parallels with the genes – memes that are at least 5000 years old, have continuously been replicating, have essentially stayed identical, while transforming according to strict laws. I indicate on Proto-Indo-European roots that all contemporary Indo-European languages have in common with languages like the ancient Indian, Iranian, Hittite, etc.

An example I do not randomly choose. When Dutch people are new in a certain region [regio] and ask for the right direction [richting] in order to receive [uitgereikt krijgen] rules [regels] and directives [directieven] to the straight [rechte] way to the government building [regeringsgebouw], they are being moved by the Proto-Indo-European meme *reg- that has been governing the language of the majority of the world’s population for thousands of years. This root underlies the word richting, but also recht. The word recht that according to Benveniste refers to the act of drawing a vertical line, shows a kinship to words like regel, regio regeren, rex.

The Latin word rex finds in Asia its pedant in the Indian word radjah. It is also related to the Greek oregô, which means stretching [rekken] and straightening [strekken]. Therewith the vertical gets a three-dimensional spaciousness. From here you can see that words like reaching [reiken], stretching [rekken], series / range [reeks], ridge [richel], calculation [rekenen] and correctness [correctheid] have all sprung from this single meme.

The meme *reg- has not only managed to multiply. It has nestled itself, as the organizer of an extended phenotype, into the organization of planet earth and set it to its hand. It forms the basis of language as a means of transport. Notice the title of a work that has been decisive for the way the world looks today. We think that Descartes is the author of the Regulae ad directionem ingenii. But the work has been written by *reg-: it hides both in the words regula and directio. This work refers to the idea that man thinks he can become king (rex) by accepting the rules that guide his innate understanding. This guidance is directed to the methodological straightening of reality with an eye to the possibility of calculation. Calculation gives life direction and provides the regulated organization of reality.

But: man is not the king of this, but the slave.” *

(Th. C. W. Oudemans 2002, Eigen taal eerst, pp. 7-8)

* Translated by Roel van Uden. The original Dutch text can be found here: 
http://www.oudemans.net/oudemans/eigentaal.pdf