At 11:26 AM 2/1/01 -0800, you wrote:
I like seeing this term "meme" show up on the list. I first ran across it in Art Kleiners book "The Age of The Heretics." He said it is a term coined by Geneticist Richard Dawkins, referring to the "Secular Millennium" a time when a fervent aspiration of Millenarians emerged in the twelfth century and came to be known as the "brethren of the free spirit.. And that a meme is a cultural element such as an idea, that replicates itself, moving through conversation and media through cultural forms of natural selection, acquiring new traits as it evolves. The Agora all over again?
You are right -- meme (pronounced meeme to rhyme with gene) is the invention of Richard Dawkins in his 1974 book, "The Selfish Gene." Dawkins tossed it in almost as a throw-away when he started speculating about the cultural equivalent of genetic transmission. So the proper definition of a meme is a unit of cultural transmission, which might vary in size from the first three notes of a Beethoven Symphony (The 5th?) to the story of Christianity. I found the notion curious and appealing, if only because it apparently related to work that I had been doing since the early '60s in which I had characterized myth and ritual as the DNA of culture. If you are interested in such arcane esoterica you might check out my last book "The Power of Spirit." And for an earlier and more scholarly treatment, my first book, "Spirit: Transformation and Development in Organizations (1987). That is no longer in print, but I have put the relevant material on the web at www.openspaceworld.com in the section marked Papers. Since 1974, a whole mess of folks have taken up the notion of memes in an attempt to refine and extend the thought. I find it all very interesting, but I am not sure what the practical application might be. Personally, I still like fussing about with myth, ritual -- and of course stories. Which in the current nomenclature are all memes. Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 USA phone 301-469-9269 fax 301-983-9314 Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org Personal website www.mindspring.com/~owenhh osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
