Ideas — are they just a load of old memes?
If memes exist, what are they?
Many dictionaries of the English language have no entry for meme because their criterion for including a word is that it is in common use without needing to be explained every time it is used. However, a typical definition of meme is a unit of cultural inheritance that is passed on by imitation. The word was invented by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, (Oxford University Press, 1976) using elements of the words memory and gene. This idea had been tried long before that, but it was Dawkin’s success with his ideas on the nature of genes that carried the proposition of memes into the mainstream. But when asked for an example of a meme it can be difficult to sound sensible because most seem so obvious and trivial: a catchy tune, a brand name, how to tie your shoelaces, or simply the words of the language you speak. This cannot be serious, you might be thinking. Well think about this. Dawkins proposed that memes can spread through populations of people without the people being concious of the spread or deliberately assisting it. Thus belief in flying saucers carrying little green men from Mars is a meme. Hatred of peoples from different countries and cultures are combined memes, as is a belief in your right to kill them for being different.
The theory of memes, or memetics, is most definitely a serious proposition. What the theory proposes is that humans are extraordinarily gifted at imitation. That, in combination with our unique and genetically inherited ability to acquire effortlessly a complex language, permits cultural change and development to become the predominant way that human societies, evolve from our pop-songs to our morals. Genes of humans are transmitted only from man to woman and mother to child, whilst memes may be transmitted from any human to any others listening, looking or reading, hence their power. Some proponents of the meme concept go as far as explaining human conciousness as the sum of the memes that each of us acquire. Susan Blackmore in her book The Meme Machine (Oxford University Press, 1999) is foremost in this.
The difficulty with memes is that they are very slippery to grasp and study empirically. How can a meme be isolated, measured, manipulated and tested? To some researchers inclined to be empirical in their methods, the idea of meme is in the same taboo area as the study of conciousness. Human behaviour is so complex to study that for the time being it seems best to leave mind and conciousness in a black-box until methods can be found to measure them reliably. Other critics ask simply if there is any real difference between a meme and an idea. So, my answer to the original question is that attempts to prove the existence of memes will require better understanding of consciousness. That in turn will require better knowledge of how a vastly complex network of nerves interact at the molecular level. This is an awesomely daunting problem. Theorizing about memes is a contribution and it is not necessary to prove experimentally their existence to use the idea. After all, the idea of atoms was very useful to chemists and even some physicists long before their existence was proved. Of course I am advocating a reductionist approach to this problem — not a popular thing with some scientists.
Try searching the web for plenty more — obviously a good place to spread memes, even if they are just a load of old ideas. (Start with Susan Blackmore, Francis Heylighen, Daniel Dennett)
Are scientists any use?
Don’t be daft — of course science is useful! The wheel, the bicyle, cars, airplanes, computers, lasers, antibiotics, vaccines, anaesthetics: what a cornucopia science and technology have brought us. Well, maybe; but the question was about scientists, not technologists. What is the difference you might ask; very reasonably since so often the two words are used as if synonymous.
They do not mean the same and the difference is very important. Scientists set out to discover how the natural world works — why does the Moon keep going round the Earth without falling down and crashing on us? Because it is moving so fast. Then why does it not fly off into outer space? Because of gravity. What is that? Ah — well, we are still working on gravity. Isaac Newton formulated his universal law of gravitation long ago and it it remains good enough for engineers to design a robot to land next to a chosen crater on the Moon. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity explained much more about gravity, but there remain anomalies and numerous propositions to explain them.
The engineer making a robot uses a wide and deep knowledge of physics in its design and the objective for the time being is to discover more about the nature of the Moon rather than bring back something utilitarian like precious new minerals. So scientists become technologists when they need to make instruments to get data. But an engineer seeking to improve the profitability of a automobile factory sets out to invent robotic assemblers and welders, not to discover a new law of economics.
This all seems obvious, but a closer look reveals hidden difficulties about how these endeavours should be funded. Sending robots to the Moon costs a lot of taxpayer’s money. So, again, are scientists any use? Not much, seems the argument made by some commentators who trace numerous technological advances from their early days, through to acceptance by consumers, followed by incremental improvement after improvement, until civilized life seems impossible without them. The electric light, telephone, automobile and computer are classic examples. An obvious demand from people for a more immediate and flexible means of communicating with other over long distances led from running messengers to horse drawn postal services, to semaphores and finally the electric telegraph which soon led the way to the singular and dramatic invention of the telephone. All done by technologists, in a demand-side operation. Perhaps there was some help from those chemists and physicists who wanted to know the nature of electricity. The strange thing is that many of those scientists could think of nothing to do with electricity that satisified any demand, other than their own curiosity. The discovery of the laws of electricity was offered to the world as a supply-side gift.
This becomes a complex debate about how the big differences between science and technology influence the proper use of public and private funds and how our lives can be improved by making better decisions on this. (For more, the web is little direct use. Try starting with Terence Kealy on The Economic Laws of Scientific Research published in 1996 by Macmillan for a lively polemic in favour of inventors. Comroe J.H. & Dripps R.D. provide detailed information on the benefits of basic research in Scientific basis for support of biomedical science, published in Science, 1976, vol 192, pgs 105-111. Or buy my book when published — Magical Inventions or the Art of Discovery?)
Who invented the laser?
Theodore Maiman and Irnee D’Haenens in 1960 in a lab at Malibu near Los Angeles, made a test run with a small device of deceptively simple appearance. An aluminium cyclinder containing a helical electronic flash bulb around a central rod of ruby that had polished and silvered ends was all it was in engineering terms. In terms of the frontiers of quantum physics it was about to demonstrate that an obscure principle of physics worked out by Albert Einstein many years before could be put to practice with light, to produce, for the first time on Earth, a laser beam. Maiman went on to earn a living as an inventor and developer of lasers but his feisty autobiography makes clear his beleaguered status as the inventor of the laser. He credits only one person with the first idea of the laser: Valentin Fabrikant, a doctoral student in Moscow in the 1940s. Fabrikant applied for a patent in 1951 and it was granted in 1959, but he never made a working device.
But the idea of at least testing Einstein’s principle, stimulated emission of radiation, was in the air and several scientists produced experimental results indicated it could happen. During the 1940s there was intense research on microwave frequency radiation for use as radar of greatly improved accuracy and power. Naturally this received massive support from military agencies and proved of crucial strategic value. This spurt of invention and innovation bore the extra fruit of expertise and equipment that physicists could use to study the structure of atoms and molecules. Three such researchers were Charles Townes in America, and in Russia, Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nicolay Basov. Almost simultaneously, in 1954 they published and discussed at publicly the possibility of using microwaves to stimulate and amplify radiation. The Russian pair had first published on this topic in 1945. But James Gordon, Herbert Zieger and Tien Chuan Wang, doctoral student and research fellows respectively working for Townes, were first to get a maser to work. It was a large contraption which manipulated streams of ammonia gas to irradiate coherently and at a single wavelength. The maser proved of limited use but was the forerunner to the laser and stimulated huge interest in this topic. Soon enough Townes and Arthur Schawlow had an idea for converting to a laser. Using light to produce these beams would concentrate vastly more energy than microwaves but it was far more difficult to provide enough power to get them started. However, Gordon Gould, another doctoral student in the same university, had an inspiration for a simpler system. Gould’s battle to get this patented dragged on for three bitter decades but eventually he was granted a patent to one of the fundamental principles of laser action,even that of Maiman’s laser, and he eventually made a fortune by licencing rights. But neither Gould nor Maiman could claim the first patent for a working laser. That went to Ali Javan of Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1964 for a device that was soon to put to use in barcode readers and so on.
So, the laser was invented once, in Malibu. But how many famous people, Nobel prize winners, technicians, students and entrepreneurs were together in this highly competitive but unavoidably collective process? And let us not forget Einstein’s contribution, or Max Planck, Neils Bohr and all the others who started the science of quantum physics.
(There is plenty on the web about lasers, but it may be best to go direct to autobiographical and general accounts as follows. Charles Townes, How the laser happened. Adventures of a scientist, Oxford University Press 1999; Jeff Hecht, Beam, Oxford University Press, 2005; Nick Taylor, Laser – the inventor, the Nobel laureate and the thirty year patent war, Citadel Press, 2000; Theodore Maiman, The Laser Odyssey, Laser Press, 2000; Mario Bertolotti, The History of the Laser, Institute of Physics, 1999. Another account follows the struggles of the researchers who made the discoveries and inventions leading to the laser, which will be a chapter of my book Magical Inventions or the Art of Discovery).
More Ideas in preparation:
What are long tails and their connection with research papers?
Experiments on humans — any excuse?
Are ‘Invisible Colleges’ best for scientists?
Can scientists be trusted to police themselves?
What is the scientific method?
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Apr/04 - Test article
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