| 释义 |
meme, n. Biol.|miːm|
[Shortened from mimeme (see quot. 1976), f. Gr. µίµηµα that which is imitated, after gene n.1]
An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.
1976R. Dawkins Selfish Gene xi. 206 The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun which conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme... It should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘cream’. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. 1976New Scientist 9 Dec. 619/2 A rational person who hasn't acquired any variety of the God meme described by Richard Dawkins. 1980Ibid. 3 July 50/2 The mutant reading (a meme as some sociobiologists might call it) appears to have had at least three independent origins. 1986W. A. Koch Genes vs. Memes iii. 40 Although genes and memes are interconnected in one direction (genes create memes), their circular embrace is disrupted at one point. 1986Canad. Jrnl. Zool. LXIV. 1576 Congruence of the patterns of morphometric and cultural evolution in these islands suggests..that the differentiation has been influenced by a colonization history involving restricted gene and meme flow between archipelagos, subsequent drift, and possibly founder effects. 1988Ecology LXIX. 104 (heading) Biological and cultural success of song memes in indigo buntings. 1993Wired Feb. 132/2 I'm not sure what happens to such a culture when radical Maoism is replaced by the far more seductive meme of Western consumer culture. |