DMS Graduate Student Seminar

Speaker: Pete Johnson, Auburn University

Title: Meme Theory in Mathematics:  Early Days

Abstract:  The term “meme,” meaning any idea, notion, or system thereof, that can exist in the human mind and be communicated, was first mentioned in print (so far as I know) by Richard Dawkins, in one of the later chapters of The Selfish Gene. He credits a colleague for the idea.  Dawkins is a Darwinian theorist; he was fascinated by his colleague’s idea because it dawned on him that memes can evolve and mutate and be acted upon by natural selection just as living organisms can.  It has long seemed to me that mathematics is a great area in which to study meme evolution, due to the relative simplicity and recognizability of the relations among mathematical memes; mathematics might be to meme theory as our solar system has been to physics.  I’ll give a few examples of what you might look for, and of what you might ask.