Kastalia Knowledge Management System · Glasperlenspiel template · knot 2660
Memes, Mindworms, Memplexes &c.
How do ideas spread, mutate, and survive? Why do we laugh when others laugh, adopt accents, hum songs that refuse to leave our heads, or suddenly find ourselves saying "actually"? This seminar explores the evolution of information through the lens of theory of memes, also known as memetics—the study of how cultural patterns replicate, vary, and undergo selection. Beginning with genes and the logic of biological evolution, we trace the emergence of memes as cultural replicators transmitted through imitation, communication, and media. Along the way we examine mirror neurons, contagious behaviours, habits, dopamine, earworms and mindworms, the Maluma–Takete effect, memetic complexes such as fashion, ideology, and religion, self-referentiality, the formation of the egoplex, viral phenomena, computer viruses and worms, apps, emojis, memecoins, and other contemporary manifestations of cultural evolution. Combining perspectives from evolutionary theory, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, media studies, and computer science, the seminar invites participants to view culture itself as an evolving ecosystem of replicating patterns which often act and express themselves independently from what our bodies, minds and souls "actually" want.
Ancestors (2 superordinated paths)
Descendants (at least 43 branches originate here)
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Memes, Mindworms, Memplexes &c.
How do ideas spread, mutate, and survive? Why do we laugh when others laugh, adopt accents, hum songs that refuse to leave our heads, or suddenly find ourselves
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Memes in Alltag
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Session 0 · Memetics begins at home.Before Internet memes, before ideology, before theory: gestures, tunes, habits, rituals, phrases, drawings, interfaces and e-
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Meme
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“A meme is whatever is copied from person to person.”— Susan Blackmore, working definitionFor today, let us start with this deliberately simple definition. -
is_parent Copied? ·
Copying does not necessarily mean making an exact duplicate.You hear a joke.You remember the structure, forget several words, change a character......and tell i -
is_parent Two Worlds ·
external expression → perception → internal reconstruction → expressionA meme can appear outside us: as sound, gesture, image, text, object, ritual.It can be re -
is_parent A Word of Warning ·
Memetics is a theory among other theories.Human culture can also be studied through psychology, anthropology, sociology, cultural evolution, semiotics, media th -
is_parent Not Everything That Spreads Is a Meme ·
A virus spreads. That does not make it a cultural meme.Genes are copied. That does not make them memes.You discover by yourself that fire is hot. No person-to-p -
is_parent Where Is the Meme? ·
Is the meme the sentence?The idea expressed by the sentence?The memory in somebody's brain?The rule that allows the sentence to be reconstructed?The pattern dis -
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Memethical Engineering
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Memethical engineering is the deliberate design, modification, and circulation of memes and memetic environments in accordance with explicit ethical goals.For e -
is_parent Engineering the Environment ·
Memetic engineering asks: How can this spread?Memethical engineering must additionally ask: Should it spread?Who benefits?What disappears when it succeeds?Can p -
is_parent Memes in Alltag
Let us now temporarily leave theory behind.Look at ordinary life as a landscape of things passing from person to person.We will move from the smallest and faste -
is_parent From Meme to Memeplex
Memes rarely live alone.They support, trigger and protect one another.A fashion includes clothes, vocabulary, gestures, music, places and identities.A professio -
is_parent Exercise · Find One
Think of one meme you encountered today.Not necessarily an Internet meme.Where did you encounter it?What was its external form?What did you reconstruct internal -
is_parent Memes in Alltag ·
A handshake.A birthday song.A stupid little drawing in a school notebook.A phrase you suddenly notice yourself saying.A floppy disk that survived its floppy dis
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The Second Replicator
Replication + Variation + Selection = Evolution-
is_parent Before Darwin ·
For most of human history, the diversity of life was explained by one simple idea: species are fixed, created once, unchanging.A rabbit begets a rabbit. An oak -
is_parent Darwin's Insight ·
In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed something radical: species are not fixed.They change, slowly, over generations — new species arise from old ones through -
is_parent The Engine of Evolution ·
Replication + Variation + Selection = EvolutionDarwin never used these three words this way — but this is the abstract engine hiding inside his argument.T -
is_parent Replication ·
Something must be copied from one generation to the next.Offspring resemble parents — not perfectly, but closely enough that traits persist.Darwin did not -
is_parent Variation ·
No copy is perfect.Within any population, individuals differ — in size, colour, behaviour, shape.Some of this variation is heritable: it gets passed on, i -
is_parent Selection ·
Not every variant survives. Not every survivor reproduces equally.Resources are limited; environments are demanding.Whatever traits make an individual slightly -
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Darwin's Finches
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In 1835, Darwin collected small birds across the Galápagos Islands — a few hundred kilometres off the coast of Ecuador.Back in London, ornithologis -
is_parent One Ancestor, Many Beaks ·
The beaks matched the food available on each island: hard seeds, soft fruit, insects, nectar.Darwin's explanation: all the finches descended from a single ances -
is_parent Why Finches Matter ·
The finches are not proof of evolution by themselves — but they are an unusually clean illustration of the engine in action, isolated on real islands, at -
is_parent Universal Darwinism ·
Darwin described biological evolution. But notice: nothing in the three-step engine mentions DNA, cells, or carbon chemistry.It only requires: entities that are -
is_parent Beyond Carbon ·
The pattern shows up again and again, once you know to look for it:your immune system selects among antibody variants for the ones that bind an intruder;compute -
is_parent Dawkins' Reframing ·
In 1976, Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene — and reframed the whole story.It is not organisms that are the true unit of selection, he argued. It -
is_parent Replicators and Vehicles ·
Two roles, easy to confuse:Replicator — the thing that gets copied. The gene.Vehicle — the thing that is built, survives, and reproduces, carrying r -
is_parent A Question Dawkins Asked ·
If the gene is just one possible kind of replicator……could there be others? Things that are copied, vary, and are selected — but are made of -
is_parent The Second Replicator ·
“I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet… I shall call it a meme.”— Richard Dawkins, The Selfish -
is_parent Genes and Memes Compared ·
Gene — replicated via reproduction; vehicle: the body; variation: mutation; selection: survival & reproduction.Meme — replicated via imitation; -
is_parent Ideas in Motion ·
We began with finches on volcanic islands and ended with an idea that may be living, right now, inside each of you.If memes are real replicators, then minds are
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is_parent Imitation & development of human individual 🔒 ·
Freud, Dawkins, Rizzolatti -
is_parent Cultural evolution 🔒 ·
Theory of cultural evolution. Excursion to Humboldt Forum, maybe ? -
is_parent Visual memes – glyphs, emojis, latrinalia, artefacts &c. 🔒 ·
Visual memes – glyphs, emojis, latrinalia &c. -
is_parent Earworms, mindworms, moving memes::Fashion, Style, Art &c. 🔒 ·
Earworms, mindworms, moving memes::Fashion, Style, Art &c. -
is_parent Mediated memes, Urban memes 🔒 ·
Mediated memes, Urban memes -
is_parent Memplexes 🔒 ·
Memplexes, Religions, Ideologies, Self-reference -
is_parent Memes in Law, Politics & Propaganda 🔒 ·
Memes in Law, Politics & Propaganda -
is_parent Memes & Cyberspace 🔒 ·
Memes & Cyberspace -
is_parent Memes, Memecoins, AIs 🔒 ·
Memes, Memecoins, AIs -
is_parent Memes revisited 🔒 ·
Memes revisited -
is_parent The Congress 🔒 ·
The Congress
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