Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study

Although the theory of memetics appeared highly promising at the beginning, it is no longer considered a scientific theory among contemporary evolutionary scholars. This study aims to compare the genealogy of memetics with the historically more successful gene-culture coevolution theory. This comparison is made in order to determine the constraints that emerged during the internal development of the memetics theory that could bias memeticists to work on the ontology of meme units as opposed to hypotheses testing, which was adopted by the gene-culture scholars. I trace this problem back to the diachronic development of memetics to its origin in the gene-centered anti-group-selectionist argument of George C. Williams and Richard Dawkins. The strict adoption of this argument predisposed memeticists with the a priori idea that there is no evolution without discrete units of selection, which in turn, made them dependent on the principal separation of biological and memetic fitness. This separation thus prevented memeticists from accepting an adaptationist view of culture which, on the contrary, allowed gene-culture theorists to attract more scientists to test the hypotheses, creating the historical success of the gene-culture coevolution theory

The Role of Individuals in Cultural Transmission: Urban Legends as a Critique of Memetic Theory

Studium humanitní vzdělanosti - Kvalifikační modulLiberal Arts and Humanities - Qualified Skills ModuleFaculty of HumanitiesFakulta humanitních studi

The Role of Individuals in Cultural Transmission: Urban Legends as a Critique of Memetic Theory

Studium humanitní vzdělanosti - Kvalifikační modulLiberal Arts and Humanities - Qualified Skills ModuleFaculty of HumanitiesFakulta humanitních studi

Anthropomorphization in Communication with Nonhuman Entities

In this thesis I pursue a critical summary of the so-called "talking animals" projects, wherein the researchers tried to train their animal subjects to perform "linguistic" feats. Considering both the fundamental dissilimarity of the projects and the uniformity of their results, I am lead to conclude that the shortcoming was that of the students - the animals, and not that of the teachers. Failure of the animal projects points mainly to the fact, that a core feature of language is missing in the pseudolinguistic feats of the animals that which is missing is the hierarchical recursive syntax. I conclude that no animal has had likely adopted the open, unbounded, hierarchically recursive system that allows us, quite literally, to express anything. Linguistic data that I considered indicates that language is most likely an inborn neural specialization of H. spaiens. All the available facts considered manage to show that the pseudolinguistic feats of the "talking" animals are most likely caused by a great plasticity of general cognition. General cognition has the capacity to virtually simulate (although imperfectly) certain aspects of human neural linguistic specialization. Neural linguistic specialization in H. sapiens is an evolutionary discontinuity, whereas the general cognition plasticity is..