La memetica, come molti sanno, è una cosa inventata da Richard Dawkins in un capitolo del suo libro Il gene egoista. In origine era solo un'analogia molto interessante. Dawkins si chiedeva se oltre al Dna era possibile individuare altre entità che evolvessero in modo darwiniano, ovvero tramite replicazione ed errori, e la selezione operata dall'ambiente. Un possibile candidato, secondo Dawkins, erano le "idee", o "unità di memoria", ribattezzate "memi" per assonanza con i geni.
Le idee, secondo questa concezione, sarebbero copiate e trasmesse più o meno fedelmente attraverso i vari veicoli (i cervelli umani, eventualmente attraverso l'intermediazione di media come la stampa o la tv), entrerebbero in competizione tra loro per occupare le limitate risorse di memoria dei loro portatori, ed evolverebbero di conseguenza.
Una filastrocca, ad esempio, può essere sentita una prima volta, memorizzata, e poi ritrasmessa con qualche piccola modifica. Il successo delle varie ed eventuali modifiche, che possono dipendere da semplici lacune di memoria di colui che ripete la filastrocca, dipenderà dalla loro facilità di memorizzazione e di esecuzione. Filastrocche troppo complicate e con lines are too long, difficult words, and the metric bold, therefore, tend to give way to their simplest versions, the repetitive cadence and rhyming couplets.
The idea is that interesting as, according to Dawkins, genes do not necessarily work for the good of the host organism, but working selfishly for his own advantage above (the maximum spread in the biosphere), so they should also act memes. This would explain the spread of ideas that seem highly pernicious, at least from the standpoint of human beings that house them.
The paradigmatic example of the meme is a classic chain letter, released a letter as in the old days, or even better e-mail. A message like this has no other function than to replicate as closely as possible, and in fact its content consists of little more than education "replicami, accompanied by some threat or flattery. It could be likened to a virus, which in fact is nothing but a thin shell of proteins containing a string of DNA whose sole function is to replicate. Some variants of the classic chain-buffalo are the usual appeals, that relying on universal feelings as compassion for sick children or suspicion of wrongdoing against multinational firms convince us to spread the message content has not been verified.
But Dawkins says, provocatively, that even vastly complex cultural entities such as the religions could be compared to the "virus of the mind." The benefit that religions bring to the life of the individual or society as a whole, it is doubtful (at least from the perspective of Dawkins who is a notorious anti-clerical). But religions, sometimes with little content "reasonable" (as the belief in a virgin birth), are provided, such as chain letters, their threats and enticements in order to convince them not to abandon the bearer, and indeed to propagate.
A "trick" very successful, for example, a barrier against the reasonableness and good sense, is the famous motto attributed to Tertullian, "I think quia absurdum", "believe it because it is absurd," and not "despite being absurd." In this way, the absurdity of a belief system becomes the eyes of the wearer, in a value, in a fascinating feature, rather than a defect. This "athleticism of faith," that a man is more virtuous than most can digest the worst nonsense, is in fact a common feature of many religious beliefs.
Memetics so it would be the scientific study of the strategies developed by the memes in order to ensure themselves the widest possible dissemination and preservation. The problem is that such a science is not exists, despite the resounding success of the idea of \u200b\u200bDawkins at the level of pop culture, because after thirty years of the publication of The Selfish Gene are still stuck at the stage of vague suggestion of the analogy. And probably this is also the highest which memetics can aspire: there can be a science of memetics for the simple reason that culture, not notable exceptions, does not grow at all in this way.
Dawkins, with his usual argumentative skills and intelligence, has dangled before the eyes of neo-positivists the impossible a quantitative science and materialistic culture, revolutionary as it was Darwin's theory in biology, and many its admirers (including as a great philosopher Daniel Dennett), we have fallen in with both feet, underestimating the difficulties inherent in this vision. To begin with, the same daily experience and a minimum of introspection should warn us that things can not be that simple.
ideas, in fact, not be disseminated and replicated by simple imitation, and do not change by means of random errors: they are transformed as a result of conscious effort on the part of their carriers, to improve, assess their potential and defects. The ideas are not viruses that spread in the air from which we are infected and inadvertently spread by contagion as unconsciously. We seek them in an effort to improve our lives and our vision of the world, select and discard those that seem useless or harmful, and then we try to improve them, to find solutions to our problems or our curiosity about the world . And none of this looks like a real process of Darwinian selection.
a conscious and intelligent mind is something that always comes to breaking eggs in the basket to the various projects reductionist. There is indeed something more, for which I remain skeptical about the memetics: no one knows exactly what they consist of memes, or ideas. Not that the definition of "gene" is completely unambiguous, but in the case of genetics we know roughly what is a gene in the material world: it is a piece of deoxyribonucleic acid incorporated into a cell. We know, when a gene is the same type of another, quite apart from the role played by the body: two genes are identical when they are composed of the same nucleotides, when their "strings" are identical. While in the case of ideas, not only do we lack clear criteria for knowing when an idea is the same as another (the old Quine always said "no entity without identity"), but we also have many reasons to believe that there is nothing in the material world, which always corresponds to a single idea (such a position would amount, in philosophy of mind, the theory dell'identità dei tipi, oggi assai poco in voga).
Dal momento che non abbiamo un'idea di cosa siano, in realtà, le unità di replicazione e selezione che renderebbero conto in maniera darwiniana dell'evoluzione della cultura, è difficile pensare di poterci davvero costruire sopra una scienza rigorosa. Quella di Dawkins resta, tuttavia, una provocazione affascinante, che alcuni studiosi hanno inoltre raccolto ed elaborato in maniera critica e originale (ad esempio Dan Sperber, che invece di "memetica", con la sua stretta analogia darwiniana, preferisce parlare in modo più generico di "epidemiologia delle credenze"). E su cui vale la pena di riflettere.
Se sono abbastanza sicuro, infatti, che una tale analogia non possa affatto rendere conto dell'evoluzione della cultura nel suo complesso, può ben darsi invece che alcuni fenomeni culturali abbastanza circoscritti corrispondano grosso modo al quadro delineato da Dawkins ed epigoni. Trovo abbastanza inutile chiedersi da dove venga la teoria della relatività: essa è un parto del genio di Einstein, ed è così diffusa, nei libri di testo e nelle università, perché rappresenta una descrizione vera del mondo, o almeno un'ottima approssimazione alla verità. Ma da dove vengono, invece, le barzellette o le leggende urbane, da dove vengono certi culti religiosi (ho letto da poco un romanzo, Pastorale americana di Joseph Roth, dove la figlia del protagonista a un certo punto dedicated to Jainism: you put a gauze over his mouth to prevent damage to microbes, and refrain from washing to do no harm to water), where they come from some conspiracy theories?
Conspiracy theories are in fact a bit 'like the jokes, not in the way they make me laugh (not only), but in the sense that the propagation modes are similar. Very often there is no real "author": Some conspiracy theorists are well known, but rarely can be identified as the original authors of the conspiracy theories, because they are "air" and take root where they find fertile soil. Unlike the theory of relativity is also very difficult to argue that the causes of their taking root is found in their correspondence to reality or the success in predicting or explaining the events. They correspond rather to psychological needs, and feed the prejudices of the people or phobias.
Like jokes, they seem to spread and evolve by replication and error, in the sense that they are repeated uncritically in a mechanical way, except the many variants that acquire independent living, and which is very difficult to trace the source. The indication of the "mechanical" or automatic system of propagation is to be found in any forum for discussion of conspiracy theories, and their evolution in fluctuating and unpredictable. Suffice to note as it is almost impossible overcome or taken for granted certain notions: Let's be denounced a certain "strangeness" of the "official" regarding the 9 / 11, such as the fact that the routes traveled by air show maneuvers "impossible." The thing is repeated until someone points out that the routes created are actually not official ones, which instead appear to be run without particular difficulties. The theme is forgotten for a short period of time, but after a few months a new user opens a new debate which complains, scandalous, that the planes have come impossible maneuvers. And it starts all over again. You can not say that there is an evolution, but certainly there is no progress.
Although many amino defined conspiracy "researchers", there is no doubt that scientific research does not progress that way. Researchers do not passively assimilate the concepts parroting without checking and without updating the state of the art research. The researchers are in search of better information, more updated, and then try to process them personally (where, however, is not intended for personal computing, of course, the first boiata that comes to mind), and then check again the fruit of their processing . No, scientific theories do not look that great to Dawkins' memes.
I find it interesting that a theory advanced in order to account, in a systematic and quantitative-like, the evolution of culture, or the highest expression of the human mind and its reasoning capabilities, is able to look promising only in those limited areas where rationality seems to fail completely on his task.
Original article and blog comments the maypole
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