Friday, March 14, 2008
Power of the People
How do we enact change?
The biological evolutionary process provides some clues. A few, small adaptations occur over a long period of time. The mutations that work best survive to be passed on to subsequent generations.
Can this work for ideas? Richard Dawkins calls them memes. What questions are sparked by Dr. Dawkin's concept and how has the cumulative effect of seemingly minuscule alternations in our cultural consciousness altered our world?
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3 comments:
"But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are stil going strong." (Dawkins, 1989)
As teachers, maybe what we are doing is propagating "memes".
Interesting concept of "memes" that they are alive. The spread of ideas and information is quicker than ever and the trend will probably continue. I think teachers are definitely one way "memes" are propogated.
Great post. Your use of understatement perfectly represents and elucidates the concept of memes.
In the same way a morpheme represents the smallest unit of language, a meme describes the tiniest packet of cognizance.
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