Memes and Morphic Resonance (and You Punkeroo)

Halfie commented today that he wasn't familiar with 'memes' and even after looking it up on Wikipedia he says "I'm not much wiser."

I'm not surprised, Halfie.  Even when a Wikipedia entry is accurate, it's often not written clearly.

Put simply, a meme is an idea that replicates itself, by people seeing the idea and thinking "Hey, that's a good idea, I'll do it too!"  You can consider it either as a sort of mathematical description of how ideas spread, or you could consider it as a supernatural and spiritual life form.  Fashions are memes, and crazes are memes on drugs.

If I truly was the first to start the idea of photographing pairs of boots (at least from a boater's perspective) and other people saw my posts and started doing it themselves, then it would be my meme.

In this case I photographed the 'boatyard boots' at Streethay Wharf to start it off, and then pictured a boot used as a flower pot on a narrowboat. 

Then I photographed boots on Sarah's boat 'Warrior' at the IWA 2007 festival.  Sarah observed that they were Jim's boots, and very shortly after that she photographed her own boots in the style of my boatyard boots.  Others have followed suit, the latest being Maffi.

(Coventry Canal Basin craft shop You Punkeroo, which opened last year as a recycling workshop, even started giving classes this year in garden boots.  That's putting gardens in boots, not gardening in your boots. )

But what if it wasn't my meme - or even a meme at all?  Hey, what if we all had the idea independently, and that the others who also had the idea didn't know of my idea? 

Well, then, perhaps another supernatural concept comes into play: Morphic Resonance.  Put simply, this is the idea that once something has already happened, somehow the 'shape' of its idea remains, and this makes it easier for it to happen again - anywhere.  For example, once a stone age man had invented the wheel, the very fact that he had done so was perhaps 'imprinted' on space and time.

It's a clever and interesting idea.  But many scientists think this is an unprovable (or at least unfalsifiable) theory, so is probably closer to religion - or perhaps magic - than science. 

Using Douglas Adams' phrase they'd probably say it's a load of dingo's kidneys. But that didn't stop its creator Rupert Sheldrake from using it as the basis of his latest book Well, that about wraps it up for Science.

Comments

[iain smith]

flower all over you ???

[Fiona]

These boots were made for walking and that's just what they'll do
One of these days these boots are gonna.......