Discussion Group Report

In the last issue of this journal, John Hendrickson "protested the presentation of [Richard] Dawkins' theory of memes" in the October issue "as though it were fact rather than science fiction." Dawkins is, of course, a respected scientist, but John's challenge to what he regards as science fiction is welcome.

Each month the study group chooses a book or article to read and discuss, and then I write an article in the journal about it. The study group chooses the piece. We are a free inquiry group that likes to consider a variety of points of view. John is welcome to attend and help choose the discussion topics.

In my October article I did not refer to Dawkins' theory or any part of it is fact. The article in its entirety was an exposition, that is, a setting forth of the meaning or purpose, of Dawkins' theory. I presented the whole article as being about what he thinks, his theory.

Throughout the article I used ascriptive phrases--"...says Richard Dawkins," "Dawkins names..." "explains Dawkins," etc.--often enough to make it clear that I was describing his theory, not fact. I did use a number of declarative sentences in the manner in which these are often used to describe an author's ideas, for example, "Just as we can think of genes as active agents working for their own survival, we might think of memes in the same way." Read in context, these sentences are obviously statements of parts of Dawkins' theory rather than statements of fact. If I used an ascriptive phrase with every declarative sentence, the writing would be redundant and tediously repetitive.

Nor did I ever indicate that I agreed or disagreed with the theory. As a matter of fact, I feel there are some problems with the theory, but being unscientific is not one of them.

John says Dawkins notions are unsupported "by a single shred of objective evidence to verify the existence of 'units of information analogous to genes which transmit ideas." As a matter of fact, the scientist cites examples of evidence from real life of such units, such as tunes, ideas, catch phrases, clothes fashions, and ways of making pots or building arches. Dawkins regards these as units of information that transmit ideas. He also shows their analogy to genes, that they leap from brain to brain as genes leap from body to body, though the two leap by different processes.

It is interesting that Edwin O. Wilson, another noted scientist, refers to memes in his recent book Consilience. Having discussed Dawkins' theory, members of our discussion group would not be lost with Wilson's reference.

I hope this clarifies the nature of our discussion group and my write-ups about our discussions.