Foo. I guess the definition is still murky then. OK, I'll go back to my own terminology of cultural viruses/designer viruses.
Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
Author, "Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme"
Free newsletter! http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
Of David McFadzean
Sent: Friday, June 25, 1999 7:53 AM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: virus: Definition of memeplex (was: ESS's and Punc. Equil.)
At 08:40 AM 6/23/99 -0600, David McFadzean wrote:
>At 09:54 PM 6/22/99 -0700, Richard Brodie wrote:
>>I'm using Blackmore's definition. I don't consider the old memetic lexicon
>>authoritative.
>
>OK, I guess we need a new word for "set of mutually-assisting
>memes which have co-evolved a symbiotic relationship".
Here's what Blackmore actually says:
"These are examples of groups of memes that replicated together. Dawkins calls such groups 'coadapted meme complexes', a phrase recently abbreviated to 'memeplexes' (Speel 1995)."
It looks to me like Blackmore's definition is consistent with the one in the "old" memetic lexicon. In particular it does not differentiate between mind and cultural replicators.
I traced the original mention to Speel's paper: <http://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/memsel.htm> Again, I saw no obvious distinction drawn between mind and cultural replicators. Like in Blackmore's book the word "meme" is used to denote both kinds.
-- David McFadzean david@lucifer.com Memetic Engineer http://www.lucifer.com/~david/ Church of Virus http://www.lucifer.com/virus/