Memetics
The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid 1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Memeticists have proposed that just as memes function analogously to genes, memetics functions analogously to genetics. Memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas.
Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in other fields of cultural study, such as sociology, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. Questions remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a validly disprovable scientific theory. This view regards memetics as a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors.
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Other articles related to "memetics, memetic":
... It has been proposed that just as memes are analogous to genes, memetics is analogous to genetics ... Memetics has been deemed a pseudoscience on several fronts ... untested, unsupported or incorrect." Luis Benitez-Bribiesca, a critic of memetics, calls it "a pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the ...
... The memetics movement split almost immediately into two ... Gibran Burchett, another memeticist responsible for helping to research and co-coin the term memetic engineering, along with Leveious Rolando and Larry Lottman, has stated that a meme can be defined, more precisely ... The main rationale for externalism was that internal brain entities are not observable, and memetics cannot advance as a science, especially a quantitative science, unless it moves its emphasis onto the ...
... as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host." Memetic Equilibrium – refers to the cultural equivalent of species biological equilibrium ...
... Memetics, which comes from the meme idea described in Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, is similar to DIT in that it treats culture as an evolutionary process that is distinct from genetic transmission ... However, there are some philosophical differences between memetics and DIT ... One difference is that memetics' focus is on the selection potential of discrete replicators (memes), where DIT allows for transmission of both non-replicators and non-discrete cultural variants ...
... Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene ... Memetics is also notable for sidestepping the traditional concern with the truth of ideas and beliefs ... The Usenet newsgroup alt.memetics started in 1993 with peak posting years in the mid to late 1990s ...