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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeH who wrote (1127)	10/14/1999 11:36:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 69300

There is a study of the evolution of ideas called MEME theory. It got started, kind of by accident, by Richard Dawkins when he brought up the idea of a unit of thought, called a meme, which was analgous to the gene of biology. He really didn't pursue it in any detail but it has caught on with a rather large following. The rules of memes are different from the Natural Selection of Darwin because new ideas can be adopted, discarded, and re-adopted. This is rather Lamarkian in nature. There is not a discovered means of combination during the reproduction of ideas, for example in the old "telephone" party game where an idea is whispered through the various guests and emerges in quite a different form from the last in the chain. It happens, but nobody has a good theory of how or why. The Darwin of meme theory has yet to publish. There is some compeling field research in the field. Much of the best work is studies of advertising campaigns, what will induce someone to act on the thought, or pass it on to their neighbor. There is an attempt underway to map the meme sequence of the Catholic church teachings to see how it has reproduced, maintained integrity, and evolved. I can feel that one day a book will be produced that is going to knock the socks off most people, but it hasn't been written yet. TP