Fernando,
> On Jul 20, 2018, at 11:13 AM, Fernando Galdino <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Before becoming internet lingo, "memes" was coined by Richard Dawkins
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme> for " is an idea, behavior, or style
> that spreads from person to person within a culture".
No. The claim is that a meme is analogous to a gene and that the spread of memes is functionally similar to the spread of genes. When memeists retreat to claims that memes are what is copied and things are copied therefor memes must exist and are thus the explanation of something, they turn their claim from verifiably wrong to un-verifiably vague. Blackmore makes both claims—they are just like genes and they are something she won’t even try to define.
The proponents of meme theory give vague descriptions of what a meme is, make broad claims about what memes do, and (unexplained) assertions about how they do it.
Blackmore would have us believe that “every time somebody copies somebody else—hears a story and passes it on—that is what we call a meme. We’re just giving a name to the information that’s copied. . . but if you have an idea that you invented by yourself, for yourself, without any help from anyone else, that’s not a meme.”
The claim that stories that are retold are “copies” plain and simple is nearly as silly as the notion that there is “an idea that you invented by yourself, for yourself, without any help from anyone else.”
It is clear that Blackmore has managed to think about memes without doing much thinking about the sort of thing that the meme is meant to describe.
Biologist Steve Jones put it well: “Evolution is to allegory as statues are to birdshit. It is a convenient platform upon which to deposit badly digested ideas. Darwin saw where the importance of his theory really lay (‘species are not—it is like confessing a murder—immutable’). He was much opposed to its naive use in human affairs.”
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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