Patterns As Memes

RichardDawkins, who coined the term meme, says:

Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

For a meme to last it must have survival value. Dawkins goes on to speculate about the survival value of various memes, like celibacy among priests.

ChristopherAlexander's patterns are memes since they are ideas that propagate (as a son helps his father build) and have survival value (by making a structure better). Realize that the propagator of the meme (the son) need not understand how or why the meme/pattern works or even that it is present. But, the professional architect, by building structure for other than himself, breaks the memeline and thereby extinguishes millennia of mememic evolution. Alexander's books are his attempt to protect the architectural memepool.

Very interesting dicussion... but how about the students of the architect? Isn't the meme pool - the patterns, passed on to them and continuing the memeline there? People that inherit the ideas of others can be seen as IntellectualDescendants?. -- MichaelBeedle

Part fractored out to ReligionMemes?.

In its canonical form the viral meme has a replication hook that is associated with a personal and social agenda, often including extended ritual and behavior. The notion of SelfReplicatingMemeSystems are explored further in Hofstadter's MetaMagicalThemas. I have mined the ExtremistMassMovementPattern from this work, which I present as an example of a PatternOfMemes? (not to be confused with PatternsAsMemes).

So, by parallel construction, is there a patternSphere. Can a pattern self-replicate, and are there viruses in the patternSphere? One example leaps immediately to mind: chain letters. They meet all three criteria. It's interesting that the ideas being propagated are simply irrelevant; it's the propagation that matters. Once again, to quote (or misquote) Edward Abbey[1], "That's the philosophy of cancer."

-- ToddCoram, TomStambaugh, DonOlson & WardCunningham

Moved from MemesShmemes

"PatternsAsMemes" implies that patterns are a kind of meme, which I agree with, but the opening comment implies that patterns are actually different to memes somehow - for example with a "patternsphere" that is different to the ideosphere. What is the distinction, and is it worth making? For example, I have long considered chain letters (and their email equivalents) as being examples of memes. -- DaveHarris

"ChristopherAlexander's patterns are memes since they are ideas that propagate (as a son helps his father build) and have survival value (by making a structure better)."

I would amend that to state that the patterns make the structure more pleasing - most of Alexander's patterns are not functionally better as structure - he discusses roof height but not roof slope, and so on. --PeteHardie