Memes

On Dawkin's again, after Facebook discussion...

Darwin first introduced the world to a natural selection based evolution theory (NEST - apt since it's the home of species creation ;-) in his explanation of the diversity of species. From this huge revolution in thinking the idea has found application in everything. I have just built a model of the solar system which evolves by NEST from dust (to look at the emergence of Phi in dynamic systems). It is everywhere. It was the biggest shift in thinking since Renaissance clockwork universe Mechanics and before that the idea of Divine Order. It is that massive an idea.

Now Dawkins has taken Darwins idea and revamped it for the Capitalist Free-market 80's generation telling the tale of individual successful in free competing genes. Then he observed the process in ideas also and dubbed them memes.

At which point the SRH kicks in because Meme Theory (MT) is an idea and a meme itself. I have struggled to turn this into a fully fledges problem however (as with the SRH also). It is more revealing however to take NEST as a Meme also. Now if NEST fails then MT (as a subset of evolutionary theory) must fail also. Now there are many theories about the origin of diversity in the world not least the idea that things are immutable, don't evolve, and have a design or blueprint, an essence, imparted to them by The Creator. Now it is quite reasonable that NEST, which was unknown to the world for many millennia might once again fall into obscurity. It is this threat which has made Dawkins so animated. This in written into the rules of MT. Now if MT can envisage the extinction of NEST from the human mind then it envisages its own extinction from the human mind.

Now a theory is true when it can provide an answer under certain known conditions. There is no Universal theory yet (I have pages in this blog trying to argue that it is a fundamental contradiction - an argument which must be as close to a universal theory that there is). An incomplete theory has a problem because it must be able to define when it is not applicable. Quantum Theory is not applicable for gravity (as I very crudely understand it) and Relativity fails on the small scale and the other 3 forces. Each theory is incomplete, but that incompleteness is unknown to the theory. Relativity doesn't predict that it can't apply to the small scale we just know that it doesn't. Being complete and incomplete are meta statements about a theory. A Universal Theory, being Universal, must account for all its own meta statements... that is the root problem captured by the SRH but I can't quite see it yet. Now MT predicts a possible future when NEST will no longer be a meme of sufficient frequency to really be used in constructing the world... Dawkins' huge effort is proof of this possibility. The world will be thought about in different ways. This means that MT will no longer be relevant and applicable. Yet this contradicts the assumption by MT that it is relevant and still explaining this event! So if MT goes extinct which is it: is it still relevant but in hiding, or is it no longer relevant.

What this argument reveals is the dogmatism behind Dawkins position that fundamentally he believes that he is right and the NEST is true. I don't disgaree with him (I have a model right here of the solar system evolving by natural selection) but I do have a problem in the theory making claims about its own validity!